Dragon on a Dirt Road

A contemporary drama about a rural community under pressure from big business

Kristýna, a thirty-five-year-old teacher of music, returns to her birthplace in rural South Bohemia, after years of living in Prague. She wishes to straighten out relations with her family and put her past behind her. She and Tomáš, director of the local farm, are old acquaintances united in the need to salvage their private lives and an interest in a dilapidated building on the village square. Tomáš is fifty-five and starting to feel his age; he has long lived alone. Kristýna is a bringer of hope, but also of disharmony stemming from differences between city and country life. Black cars appear in the village carrying young men in suits and ties, who go from cottage to cottage offering to buy shares in the farm. Tomáš realizes that his private life is far less complex than this new crisis…

Hájíček’s new novel is set in a provincial scene of collectivization in the Fifties and property restitution in the Nineties, where new dramas unfold as the “dragons” of big business pounce on agricultural enterprises, again transforming their communities. Meanwhile, people remain the same.