Review
The first part of Slouka's second
novel tells of the narrator's childhood growing up
in post-World War II New York, the son of Antonín
and Ivana Sedlák, Czech immigrants whose marriage is
disintegrating under the weight of Ivana's love for
the man she lost during the war.
In the second part of
The Visible World it is
1986, two years after the narrator's mother has
killed herself, and the narrator has moved to Prague
in the hope of finding out what happened between his
parents, and why his mother was unable to put behind
herself events that took place forty years ago ("My
mother erased herself so thoroughly that for a long
time, I couldn't find her anywhere"); but all he
finds are hints of fact and dead ends....
Beyond the Book
A Short History of
Czechoslovakia
The lands now known as The
Czech Republic and Slovakia were
ruled by the Austrian-Hungarian
Empire for about 300 years until
the end of World War I and the
collapse of the empire. In 1918,
a union was proclaimed between
the Czech lands and Slovakia to
form the Czechoslovakian state,
an idea that had been advocated
by Czech and Slovak political
leaders and intellectuals for
sometime. However, although the
majority of Czechs and Slovaks
shared a similar language they
held greatly differing...
