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A Novel
by Zuzana Ríhová
A couple deep in the woods of a failing marriage find themselves the unwitting victims of a kidnapping plot after they move to a mysterious village in this distinctly poetic and disturbingly elegant horror novel for fans of Midsommar and The Witch.
Husband and wife Bohumil and Bohumila, together with their son, move from Prague to a remote village with the hopes of salvaging their marriage. In the searing summer heat, they try to fit in with the villagers, only to be met with hostile stares and evasive lies. Each night, the couple hears what they suspect to be a large animal wandering around their cottage—an impression that oddly corresponds to the mysterious flyers found at the local watering hole regarding a wolfen fairytale. As inexplicable coincidences begin piling up, it's clear something sinister is afoot.
After a drunken night out, Bohumil and Bohumila come home to find the house empty: their son is gone. After three days of searching, they find the villagers in festive costumes gathered outside their cottage. Is it a bizarre game, or some perverse, folkloric ritual? Are Bohumil and Bohumila in danger? And what has happened to their son?
A dark social tale that slides inexorably towards psychological horror, Playing Wolf is a modern ballad of human destiny and discovering the animal in each of us.
"A devilishly creepy work of folk horror...A hair-raising tale of a culture clash." —Publishers Weekly
This information about Playing Wolf was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Zuzana Rihova studied Czech Language and Literature and Comparative Literature at the Charles University in Prague. She has been working at the Institute of Czech Literature since 2007 and was Head of Czech Studies at the University of Oxford from 2014–2017. Říhová, who has a lifelong interest in Czech avantgarde literature, has published a collection of poetry, I'll Let You in My House (Pustím si tě do domu , 2016), and a novella, Little Eve (Evička, 2018), which was named as one of the Books of the Year in 2018 by a Czech literary web magazine.
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