Magoria: or a Tale of Great Love

Alexandra Berková

Alexandra Berková: Magoria: or a Tale of Great Love

Original title: Magorie aneb Příběh velké lásky


Genre: novella


Publisher:

Horizont 1991


ISBN: 80-7012-057-6


Pages: 88


Awards:

Egon Hostovský Prize, 1991


Foreign editions:

Finnish (Taifuuni, 1997, Eero Balk), Bulgarian (Panorama Plus, 2003, Anželina Penčeva)

Summary


A parable about life, history and motives of a grotesque “country under a flat rock”; a crystal clear allegory of Czechoslovakia before the Velvet Revolution. It is the story of a “land of pure absurdity”, where “laws are in force only sometimes ”, and where “Bellies” and “Corpses” rule. The author paints an expressively distorted picture of her own country, by means of an illusion-breaking lyric mosaic. The book also contains some feminist themes and thoughts, but is dominated by other topics, like the future role of messiahs in this “strange world”.


Reviews

"This novella is a modern and highly topical work, but it also has much in common with timeless and everlasting world literature: it harks back to the expressionist poetic of the 1920’s and even bears signs of the unique Joyce tradition... (...) This book is one of those novels that make Czech literature move forward."
Vladimír Novotný, MF Dnes

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