A novel for nerds

Johanes, Dolores, father, mother and Ostrava. A novel about painful and inappropriate growing up and finding one's own way. But there may be a fair amount of parody in it, and certainly a piece of black humour spiced with witty irony. Another bearer of the name Balabán - Jan's son Lukáš - boldly entered the literary scene. In other circumstances this information would probably be superfluous, but in this text the author faces not only the work of Jan Balabán, but above all his paternal role. The novel has a bit of a scandalous feel for Ostrava readers, who will all try to decipher the characters, events and places of this auto-fiction novel. Of course, only the author knows the truth, and so let it remain. This novel for nerds follows the complicated coming-of-age of a young man in the shadow of a domineering father who unmercifully unleashes his demons on his loved ones because he can't help it. The son, however, is convinced that his father revels in his suffering and that he is manipulatively drawing everyone around him into his own black hole. And that she's kind of throwing him and his sister under the bus. After all, the mother is no archetypal fairy tale character who equips her son for a journey with a bundle of buns. She's a woman of action, building her own career. Czech Radio recording from 2026.