Original title: Návrat
Genre: novel
Publisher:
Host, 2025
ISBN: 978-80-275-2374-0
Pages: 304
Rights sold to:
Macedonia (Muza)
Can love of God be stronger than human love?
Jana is convinced that her faith is unbreakable. This conviction becomes stronger still in 1989, when, on the threshold of adulthood, she is granted her freedom with the change of regime in the former Czechoslovakia, and she can finally live in a convent. She joins the sisters full of hope and determination, but also under certain illusions. Everyday religious life will chip away at these illusions until they disintegrate, and Jana will find herself reassessing her unfulfilled, painful relationship with Viktor, in which much remained unsaid. First and foremost, however, she must answer questions put to her by the mysterious, unbridled Karin, who one day appears at the convent among the old women. Jana’s conception of true love blurs and changes dramatically. As for the society of sisters, it must ask itself daily how in a transformed world it can return to its original mission.
Woven from many well-made, subtle narrative threads, this novel gives the reader a glimpse of a mysterious, normally inaccessible world, whose mundaneness is not at all in line with generally shared ideas. Its picture of life in a convent may seem uncomplimentary in places, but it passes no judgment.
This work is primarily a portrait of a person with all the light and darkness their existence brings. Last but not least, it is a fascinating love story that shows human love to be an untameable, many-faced beast forever seeking a mate...
Comprising an authentic narrative based on detailed knowledge of its setting, this book is neither autofiction nor autobiography. And although it addresses the intimate relationship of two teenage girls, it cannot be described as lesbian fiction.
‘Petra Dvořáková’s books excel by their sensitive portrayal of the human psyche, relationships and internal conflict. The author manages her language brilliantly, and her portrayal of emotions and everyday situations is always authentic. Her stories captivate by their profundity, empathy, humour, and ability to address important topics that are often taboo.”
Martin Stöhr, editor, Host Publishers
‘Although I lived in a convent for several years, this is not my story, nor that of any particular sister,’ says the author. ‘What is authentic is the experience and depiction of everyday life in a convent, where women of all ages, personalities and ways of thinking come together. The reality of such a life is never revealed in fleeting encounters with nuns. It can be glimpsed only when one lives among them for some time.’
Foreword
When I entered a convent in the early 1990s as a fourteen-year-old, what I experienced was beyond the imagination of an adult, let alone a child. Only at a distance of many years have I begun to examine it again and differently. Part of this examination is this novel. It is not my own story or the story of any particular sister. Its individual characters are fictional, but the everyday life of a convent, where women of all ages, personalities and ways of thinking come together, is authentic. The reality of such a life is never revealed in fleeting encounters with nuns. It can be glimpsed only when one lives among them for some time.
Because of my experience, I will never again view nuns as exceptional beings. I cannot see them as heroines, even though there have been heroines among them. I do not see them as kind and merciful, although kind, merciful women can be found in convents. Nor do I see them as cruel and heartless, although some are. I see them primarily as people who, due to their beliefs, find themselves in the confined space and unnatural constellation of a religious community. I have tried to capture the reality and authenticity of their lives, as I experienced them at the time. I am aware that I have drawn on my experience as an individual.
Although this depiction of the everyday life of a convent may seem uncomplimentary in places, it does not deserve condemnation. Above all, it is a portrayal of a human life with everything it must bear. It shows people whose qualities and natures can oscillate and deviate to assume every position a person can imagine for herself. That nuns are no exception to this is highlighted by the time at which I show their community – a time that was unusual and extremely complicated in many ways.
Petra Dvořáková, summer 2024
"Petra Dvořáková returns to a setting that she herself knows very well, and she shows the everyday reality of convent life with great precision but without sensationalism. The Return is not a scandalous confession, but an honest, very intimate search for an answer to the question of what faith is – and who or what we actually love when we say we love God. I would raise perhaps an almost liberating thought: perhaps it is not man who cannot be anything without God; perhaps it is God who ceases to exist without the man who believes in him."
Adéla Schneiderová, Page not found
"With its motif of “sinful” love behind the walls of a convent, The Return might be suggestive of penny dreadfuls, but that would not be to permit it to essentially open up the far more fundamental subject of the relationship between man and faith. The protagonist doubts, searches and questions. Not for nothing is the novel called The Return. It is about a return to one’s own inner self, a journey towards self-knowledge, true life and, for some, even God, because, as Jana says in the conclusion, “We are always being told that man is nothing without God... But I think it is the other way around. I think that, above all, God is nothing without man.”
Petra Dvořáková has long chosen controversial, often taboo topics – whether anorexia (in I Am Hunger / Já jsem hlad), incest (in Crows / Vrány) or paedophilia (in The Garden / Zahrada). In this way, she raises important topics in a readable and accessible way. After all, the question of what the Church can offer people today, especially young people, and whether it can really reach them, resonates throughout contemporary society."
Petra Smítalová, Aktuálně.cz
"[This book] presents an intimate confession, in which the protagonist does not confess to God, who is silent anyway, and who knows if he hears her at all? Jana seems to be confessing to the readers themselves, who in contrast are listening. In my case, the reader understands and experiences every joy and pain, certainty and doubt along with her. (...) As in her previous books, where she sensitively but without exaggeration raises taboo subjects, in The Return the author does not judge her characters, even though some of them commit despicable violations of the rules. She is sympathetic to their doubts and mistakes. In addition, she is an excellent storyteller who can build a story in a way that keeps the reader in suspense all the time about the unpredictable ending. She doesn’t spare us from plot twists and suggestive scenes that are very physical, even naturalistic.
(…) The author presents, among other things, a courageous – sometimes unflattering, and thus all the more valuable – testimony about the lives of nuns isolated from society in the difficult days following 1989. How were they to operate in this new world order? What was the point of their existence? And was it even possible to really go back? The returns in the book take many forms – to the old order, to God, to love, to man, to themselves... Each of them is authentic and thus convincing. Also because the author herself had the life experience of a girl who lived for a time in a convent during the same historical period."
Hana Halfarová, Vlasta
"The Return is definitely one of the strongest items in Petra Dvořáková’s bibliography.
(…) Sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, sometimes critical, sometimes loving and sometimes hate-filled, religious orders can be both stereotypical and a form of slavery, as well as deliberate dehumanization and the destruction of one’s individuality. Some scenes have an almost horror-like setting: a violent storm outside the window, the deserted and dilapidated corridors of a darkened building, a wire bed sagging down to the floor – and in the ceiling beam above it, a hook suitable for hanging. The writing is at times reportage, at times poetically figurative.
Writing as a revolt against pigeonholing and stereotyping; writing as a call for freedom, for free emotion, sexuality, for harmony between the spirit and the body. Writing that is both romantic and existential; a novel that is individualistic as well as amorous. But above all: this is a prose work that has spirit and breath, that can be trusted because it touches on the most basic things in human life: human relationships."
Radim Kopáč, idnes.cz
"[The author] does not approach the subject from a complex historical perspective, but in a very accessible and straightforward way."
Kristýna Skalníková, Novinky.cz
