An unflinching exploration of desire and betrayal
Guilt has haunted middle-aged Marek Stejskal all his life. His mentally ill mother committed suicide when he was still at school. In his twenties he was diagnosed with an inexplicable skin cancer, and recovered only after an operation and a great deal of chemotherapy. Understandably, he feels that life owes him something.
That something is happiness. His relationship with his wife Romana is burnt out, his student daughter has moved away and is living her own life. Marek is a successful speculator on the stock exchange and investor, but his work brings him no spiritual satisfaction. Speculation creates nothing, but just exploits the system.
One day he runs into his former classmate Jirka Černák. At school he was the class delinquent and now he is a powerful boss and porn magnate. Marek visits Jirka in Hamburg, where he discovers another world and meets the attractive and unexpectedly empathetic porn actress Monika, who lives with Jirka. Marek’s life takes a completely new direction, but will it lead him to the happiness he craves? What comfort, vision, or meaningful path does the modern world really offer the lost, the unhappy and the searching? Does it offer any at all?
In the context of contemporary Czech writing, the novel Death in Hamburg is an unusually raw and searingly honest treatment of the life of a middle-aged man. It could be compared with the nihilistic novels of Michael Houllebecq, but it offers rather more in the way of hope.
Books details
Original title: Poslední stanice Hamburk
Publisher: Czechia: Práh, 2021
Genre: Psychological
Pages: 360
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