Dragon on a Dirt Road

Reviews

"Hájíček’s Dragon on a Dirt Road raises more pessimistic questions than ever, presenting the modern-day village, “South Bohemianism” and the peasant temperament in darker shades, together with the dose of melancholy and nostalgia that is simply part and parcel of the author’s style. He presents believable characters and a socially important theme, while maintaining his unique signature and artistic standard."

Anna Šidáková Fialová, Tvar

 

"A substantial work has come into our hands...

(…)

Finance shapes characters, but what matters most to Hájíček is what it does to the village itself. He has the ability to build his characters’ personalities very solidly in one or two paragraphs, but most importantly, he has the skill to portray the character of the entire community. He’s a true master at that. Unspoken relationships, forgotten situations, furtive glances, all this creates a mixture of contradictions called the South Bohemian countryside.

Dragon on a Dirt Road is at its strongest the moment it ceases to be dominated by its chief characters’ bonding as partners, and the reader – like Tomáš – understands that the usurpers are not going to give up their little morsels in the shape of the local agricultural company. Hájíček doesn’t need to complicate the situation with plot structure and he fully immerses himself in the organism that is the countryside. He is able to analyse it without dissecting it. He is also able to like it without ceasing to criticize it. And above all, he is able to depict it perfectly, perhaps even bring it to life."

Aleš Palán Právo Salon

 

"Jiří Hájíček does not have an easy position. He has won almost every literary award that can be collected in the Czech Republic. Some of them even more than once, though he did turn down the 2018 State Prize for Literature. His readers and literary critics have praised him for his careful mapping of the South Bohemian countryside, writing so poetically and universally that his stories from this little world of small villages have travelled the length and breadth of the land. They are about the breakdown of relationships, ecological disasters (caused by man), loneliness and isolation.

(…)

[In this new novel,] rural unrest is being stirred up by big capital. Big Dragon is buying up shares in a large estate, which essentially means it is pitting the inhabitants of a single village against each other. This can’t be helped – they may always have had damaged relations.

Hájíček may seem repetitive at first glance, but it cannot be said that he is writing about a long-exhausted topic. Dragon on a Dirt Road seems to be a very topical book. The writer’s quiet, poetic style may give the impression that this new prose work is somehow for relaxation – but it isn’t. Beneath the crust of the quiet rural landscape, there lurks a threat. And Hájíček takes a bold approach towards it."

Jonáš Zbořil, Seznam zprávy

 

"In particular the swan song of vanishing traditions resounds strongly as a backdrop to this story."

Kryštof Eder, Host

 

"It may seem unfair to compare anything to Vojtěch Jasný’s famous film All Good Countrymen / Všichni dobří rodáci, as this is a gem that is hard to follow. However, if we were to give the new novel by the České Budějovice novelist Jiří Hájíček a label, then we could say that it is a new version of All Good Countrymen. Dragon on a Dirt Road shows that the problems of the Czech countryside did not end with the fall of the communist regime. After the collectivization and dekulakization in which communist illiterates destroyed local agriculture, we now have a phenomenon called the “hostile takeover”, which is mostly performed by former secret police agents and communists who feathered their nest because they were more ready to do so than anyone else... And they have no moral scruples to boot."

Ondřej Horák, Playboy

 

"The author also reflects on how difficult it is sometimes to combine the different worlds of two people living together. How to age well when the joy of life is fading, and how important it is to feel grounded – in a particular place and in life itself. (…)

Hájíček knows how to tell a story without any grand stylistic or other gestures, and he succeeds this time again. The story and drama slowly emerge from the seemingly humble, calm narration. Without formal mannerisms, he portrays the characters, their way of thinking and behaving in a cogent but unspectacular manner.

Occasionally he gives the reader a “view” of the South Bohemian landscape, with which he has a personal relationship, but he does not drown in lyrical passages. The main driving force behind the novel remains the plot, hand in hand with natural and lively dialogue. Hájíček’s language is civil, but when the situation calls for it, he embellishes it with subtle poetic imagery. (...)

Actually, Dragon on a Dirt Road does not particularly deviate either thematically or formally from the author’s main body of work. South Bohemia is still there, as are the countryside and the marvellous psychology of the local inhabitants and the main character with the rather autobiographical traits, who is struggling on several fronts in his life."

Petra Smítalová, Deník N

 

"Is the latest novel by Jiří Hájíček Dragon on a Dirt Road the finest fruit of our literary autumn?

(…)

The novel (...) confirms that the author’s strengths continue to include a deep knowledge of the South Bohemian region and the workings of the rural community, as well as the ability to come up with a multi-layered protagonist and endow his personal story with an interesting social overlay."

Peter Nagy, Reflex

 

"Dragon on the Dirt Road has two main characters, Tomáš and Vlasta. In their relations the author has managed to extremely well portray the mutual human and work-related trust that will withstand every test, even if these Lhotec farm workhorses do not emerge victorious from their duel with Big Dragon. It has been a long time since contemporary Czech literature has seen a working and neighbourly relationship, a strong friendship between two mature men, portrayed so unspectacularly, believably, without irony or any other winking or relativizing.

One can see from the text what an experienced, accomplished fiction writer Hájíček is. Craftwise, he’s very well-versed, shaping the narrative into short images."

Josef Chuchma Respekt

 

"When I want to look inside myself, I turn to Hájíček. His books, like Dragon on a Dirt Road, are about the areas of friction between different worlds and finding a home within oneself. They are about inner integrity and the polarization of society.

And that’s why I see them as timeless. The readers already know that they will find themselves in the South Bohemian countryside in a locals’ cottage, with a middle-aged chief protagonist looking for one last chance. But Hájíček brings new symbols to these tried-and-tested basics, this time “men from the big wide world who are buying up the local land and uprooting everyone. And a girl from the city”. But the line between change, consistency and rigidity is not sharp. And time is running out."

Martina Břeňová, Open Society Fund Foundation Director, Denník N Book of the Year survey

 

"The South Bohemian Balzac

Have you read anything by Jiří Hájíček?

Dear Jiří, it never ceases to amaze me with what lack of ostentation you successfully move in an environment that is inherently driven by the desire for recognition and fame. In an interview last year, you explained it laconically by remarking that you don’t write for money. I think you answered the unasked question of whether this lack of ambition liberates you in the affirmative.  And that is why your stories are read and appreciated both by readers and literary commissioners in unusual agreement. You have no need to astound or to dazzle, and that is probably why you are an appealing, lucid storyteller who can also fit in the grand, societal, political and intimate, personal dramas. And their chief or episodic protagonists are as real as we, your readers, are. You don’t make up fancy yarns – you write about what uplifts or afflicts us.  With Dragon on a Dirt Road, I found the analogy that best fits your books. If anyone is able to portray the way we live here today in a Balzacian way, I can’t think of anyone who comes closer to the work of that famous analyst of French society and its mores. Fortunately, you’re the complete opposite to him in your lifestyle.

When I sometimes read or hear someone longing for a great contemporary novel, I think to myself: Haven’t they read anything by Hájíček?"

Zdenko Pavelka, Lidové noviny, Book of the Year 2024

 

"The finale of both storylines feels incomplete and perhaps rather bleak, but this too is all part of Hájíček’s rural (neo)realism. The world is an increasingly sad place to live in. The path taken, where the brutality of business and power liquidates memory associated with a particular building, field or person, cannot be rerouted. The past has no place in the present, let alone in the future.

However, Jiří Hájíček gives some hope in the two final images of his latest novel. Fleeting, tiny, insignificant, but there is sometimes such a power in such detail that it could bring down even the dragon of the title."

Radim Kopáč, idnes.cz

 

"With his latest novel, Dragon on a Dirt Road, Jiří Hájíček confirms his exceptional position in contemporary Czech literature. (...)

First and foremost, Jiří Hájíček is a good storyteller. He writes believable stories, and he gets his characters to experience dramas without resorting to unlikely plots. The conflicts, both the external ones in the plot and the internal i.e. the social-psychological ones, mirror the real life of the times here. Many a reader will doubtless be able to identify with one of his everyday heroes or to find in them someone close to hand. He doesn’t invent themes, but he chooses the topics depicting social change very carefully. (…) In Dragon on a Dirt Road, we follow the attack of an unidentified predator, represented by an arrogant management company, on a small, prosperous agricultural company made up of allotment owners. Of course, Hájíček is not just concerned about the attack, but more than anything else about how people behave in such situations, who gets paid off and why, and conversely who fights the predator and why. Don’t expect a happy little tale, and you can read the novel as a metaphor for belligerents and collaborators in some worse version of the future.

Jiří Hájíček does not shy away from his genre, the socially critical novel, which he is very able to write in a thrilling and gripping way."

Zdenko Pavelka, Mezi řádky, Kosmas

 

"Both chief protagonists went to college but came back to the village and give their whole selves to the farm. They see the work as a continuation of their ancestors’ work, and farming is sometimes quite painful, but they enjoy it and are proud of it – they couldn’t be more different. With immense sensitivity  the author has portrayed their mutual working and human trust, which will endure the trials, even if the dragon wins in the end. In more recent Czech literature, I have never read such an unspectacular portrayal,  without irony or relativism, of a working and neighbourly relationship and strong friendship between two mature men. (…)

For me personally, this sophisticatedly realistic novel reminded me first and foremost of where I come from, who I am, what I do and why. And for that I thank you."

Matěj Pomahač, Ekolist.cz

 

"Hájíček is (...) a pure prose writer, the author of epic compositions, short stories, novellas and novels, in which he creates in a realistic and psychologically honest, i.e. traditional, handcrafted and unpretentious way the ’landscape’ of human types and characters that inhabit his life and literary space. This is rural South Bohemia, whose ’pensive spirit’ ideally meets Hájíček’s empathetic and observant nature.  He shows compassion and precise insight into the situations of his characters, who are faced with everyday circumstances, the weight of which places the greatest demands on them. The dramas of his stories unfold beneath the surface slowly, without major twists and turns. The reader has to cope with a certain staticity and slowness, but this is controlled and has a strategic purpose. It creates the basic attunement of his books: that is, a kindly sadness and a deepening atmosphere of  dissolution or decline, not perhaps of the world as such, but of this rural one to be sure."

Jiří Peňás, Týdeník Echo

 

"The story is based on lively, snappy dialogue and plain language. Hájíček shows a sense of when to portray the whole in detail and then again when to conceal part of the plot and let the reader only suspect it. (…) After just a few pages, he sketches a faithful picture of a small village where everyone knows each other’s business and past and present upsets in life. (...) The prose also broaches other contemporary subjects, such as voluntary childlessness and how differently it is treated by women and men. Or the issue of divorces after fifty, which are also increasing worldwide and have now earned the name ’grey divorces’. Hájíček then just touches obliquely on the climate crisis. The months and seasons that line the flow of the story are at times skewed. While winter is characterized primarily by gray skies, the summer sun burns till it ‘boils the brain’.

Added to this is the postmodern dystopia of unanchored relationships, known in English as situationship, as represented by Kristýna’s strange relationship with Tomáš. (...) Jiří Hájíček shows that the backdrop of a South Bohemian village can be used to depict not only local squabbles, but also social shifts. And that a seemingly insignificant drama in Nový Lhotec can illustrate the broader context of the pressures of big business, which go hand in hand with alienation of all kinds."

Clara Zanga, Aktuálně.cz

 

"Against the backdrop of a gripping legal, but above all human struggle, the protagonist fights for his personal happiness and a fulfilled relationship."

Jana Podskalská, Deník

 

"The author’s characteristic writing, style and worldview combine a deep relationship to his native South Bohemia, an intense knowledge of the setting, a certain deep feeling for the tradition of this beautiful part of Bohemia and a very open and realistic view of what it has been and is going through. All of this is artfully intertwined with the life stories of convincingly drawn characters who are more or less connected with South Bohemia.

This is how this latest work, Dragon on a Dirt Road, might be characterized.

(…)

Dragon on a Dirt Road is another high-quality addition to Jiří Hájíček’s bibliography."

Ilja Kučera Jnr., Právo