Born in 1956, Melvyn Clarke is a graduate of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London, where he studied Czech and Slovak language, literature and history. Since 1990 he has mostly lived in and around Prague. Recent published translations into English have included: On Description, a work on narratology edited by Alice...
‘’I dream of a world in flames: nuclear bombs falling on cities, consuming them like cancer; surviving in underground shelters, where we slowly turn into animals. These dreams are so lifelike.
This coming-of- age novel gradually pieces together a mosaic of the era of deep normalization under President Husák, when most citizens of Communist Czechoslovakia did not even dare to think that the downfall of the system was within reach.
Helena Součková, an eight-year-old schoolgirl in a small provincial town, deals not only with the uniquely dismal side of life in communist Czechoslovakia.
