Zločin plachej lesbičky, Holomráz / The Crime of the Shy Lesbian, Hearfrost

Ján Johanides' first book after the fall of the Communist regime, 1989.

The novellas The Crime of the Shy Lesbian and Hearfrost have elements of crime fiction in them.  

A short text that addresses the limits of human courage and the questions of responsibility. The story of a dark past, unpunished villains and suffering innocents is distinguished by the author’s
wide range of narrative approaches.

The story has criminal undertones and is told from the point of view of the main character – an actor who has bought a cottage amongst remote smallholdings. He finds himself in the middle of intrigues, hostility, local wrongdoing and covert crimes from the past. Despite the fact that he does not want to get involved in them, through his neighbours – victims and minions of the former regime – he is exposed to several conflicting accounts of what has happened. The author gradually reveals the characters’ motives but withholds explanations and thus leaves the reader in a cowl of ambiguity. The facts are challenged by the conversations of other characters, which obscure and distort the truth and create subjective versions of events that diverge wildly.

 

 

Year

1991

Book category

General Fiction