Je Suis Paris

Another book by one of the strongest voices in post-revolution Czech prose. In Je suis Paris, Jiří Kratochvil is first and foremost a ‘vicious narrator’ (though not an immoral one) rather than an analytical intellectual. The story has many levels and dark corners for the reader to explore. Everything comes together in a telling of exceptional precision and lightness which runs like a well-oiled machine. Fashioned with Kratochvil’s characteristic wit and exceptional verbal power and borne up by his famous ironic yet anxious scepticism, the mechanism is easily accessible to the reader. Death is the only certainty in life. Our hopes are just a different version of the rabbit’s belief in a promised land in faraway Australia.