'When on the island I sometimes imagined an inverse world, in which concert halls would be turned over to the sounds of rain and the rustling of winds while in the treetops and on the weirs and behind the walls of factories, sonatas and symphonies would ring out in a world such as this the damp on the plastering of walls would probably form coherent text while the pages of books would be covered with indistinct marks.'ĭruhé město translated by Gerald Turner as The Other City, again published by Dalkey Archive The islanders seem at first to do nothing but sit and observe the world, and indeed draw no distinction between reality and representation, so that a mirror image seems as substantial to them as a person (and vice versa) but the center of their culture is revealed to be 'The Book,' a handwritten, collective novel filled with feuding royal families, murderous sorcerers, and narrow escapes.Īnyone is free to write in 'The Book,' adding their own stories, crossing out others, or even appending 'footnotes' in the form of little paper pouches full of extra text-but of course there are pouches within pouches, so that the story is impossible to read 'in order,' and soon begins to overwhelm the narrator's orderly treatise. The Golden Age is a fantastical travelogue in which a modern-day Gulliver writes a book about a civilization he once encountered on a tiny island in the Atlantic.

Zlatý věk translated by Andrew Oakland as The Golden Age, published by Dalkey Archive In the past couple of years the works by Michal Ajvaz have been published in eight countries (Russia, Poland, France, Hungary, Slovenia, USA, Holland / Belgium, and Sweden), and publication is pending in three more (Croatia, Bulgaria and Norway).Īt least two of his books are available in English language. Michal Ajvaz makes philosophical excursions along with linguistic explanations, lectures on literary theory, scenes on the verge of phantasmagoria, bizarre findings from animal or plant world and mysterious journeys – all this actually follows a single path with a single purpose: destabilising the absolute trust in human way of exploring the world, the ideas we create about ourselves and the environment surrounding us. Philosophically and aesthetically erudite writer, Michal Ajvaz constructs his texts as one would build a house – he piles the levels of his story up one on top of the other, which is similar to the concept of computer games or to the picture of a Dutch lady depicted on a can of cocoa, holding a can of cocoa with a picture of a Dutch lady.

The golden age michal ajvaz