White Water

Evarista's story and the fates of other nuns are based on real events, which Kateřina Tučková has spent many years researching in archives and among the survivors. In addition to the gripping plot, her novel critically examines the position of women in the Catholic Church and, on a symbolic level, the unequal status of women in society as a whole.

I wrote the novel on and off for ten years. In the meantime, I read the materials I discovered in the archives, talked to the memorials, stayed in the monastery, and also went through a complex spiritual search that helped me get closer to my characters from the inside. I think it's my most experienced book.

White Water combines everything that Kateřina Tučková has already used to great effect in Žítkovské bohíny - strong (here not only) female heroines, the theme of persecution and prefigurations in real historical events or characters.

White Water may arouse the displeasure of some Catholic dignitaries, men and perhaps women accustomed to listening in the pews and forming a crowd. That's fine - but through the history of forced internment and imprisonment, Kateřina Tučková has arrived at a topic that need not be merely remembered as a tragic historical period, but can be opened up for contemporary discussion. Even for people outside the Catholic community.

Kateřina Tučková went against the tide, for which she deserves great admiration. She opened up a topic completely unknown to me, the subject of women religious, and in the space of the difficult years of communism she built a tribute not only to them, but above all to the power of faith in God, and it all makes literary sense. She didn't overlook evil, Death, despair, blasphemy, did not omit humanity in all its forms (beatings, despair, Sadness, vortex, love, humiliation), but I get it, it must have been extremely draining.