I am their god

Bergen, Norway, 1999. Light and Darkness; consciousness and unconsciousness; inner and outer world; unbreakable confidence and overwhelming doubt. Pride and fall. Loss and search. The whirlwind of obsessive thoughts and the existential disquiet experienced by the hero of Josef Pánek's new novel once again exposes the reader to the vertigo of uncompromising writing that at times frightens itself. Who is the idol, a self-assured god, who has no doubt whatsoever about his uniqueness, always knows, what he wants, and does it without remorse? The young man whom all his friends admire to no end? And what happens to him when, by his own choice, he loses the security of his home, where he knows everything, where he is in control - or so he thinks - and moves from post-revolutionary Czechia to Bergen in search of a scientific career? To a city where it's always dark and gloomy, where it rains half the year, where nobody understands; where loneliness and abandonment take on a whole new dimension... What happens to him in a place where he is brought to his knees by unpredictable strangeness, where he can no longer rely on his own senses?
Josef Pánek, the author of the original prose novel Love in a Time of Global Climate Change, for which he won the prestigious Magnesia Litera Award in 2018, comes up with an impressive new novel in which he goes to the extremes of internally conditioned experience and a sharpened experience of the strangeness of the world.
The long-awaited new novel by the Magnesia Litera Award winner.
The publication of the book was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic