Běsa

Běla and Sabina are identical twins. Their extraordinarily powerful childhood bond unravels because of a battle with drugs from which only one of the sisters will emerge victorious. Once that battle is over, their mother will be overwhelmed by self-pity as she expends most of her thoughts and love on the lost child. The other child loses her mother as well as her twin.  

Vitalij was born in a Czech village in Ukraine, in the year of the girls’ birth. Now an adult, he decides to visit the home of his forebears, a land he longs to see. Once in Prague, however, he becomes involved with Luboš, a pimp and dealer in foreign workers who deprives him of all his illusions. 

Then a child is born who connects the fates of all the protagonists, forcing them to reappraise their understanding of all it means to be a sister, a mother … and a father, too. 

The novel Běsa is a many-layered existential drama that is a loose continuation of the author’s highly successful novel Malinka.