Corpse Incinerator

A psychological novel with elements of horror and black satire, based on the 1968 cult film directed by Juraj Herz and starring Rudolf Hrušínský.

The book was published in 1967 and belongs to the so-called second wave of war literature. The story takes place just before the outbreak of World War II and ends with a plot jump to 1945.

The main character of the story is Karel Kopfrgingl, the father of a middle-class family, a strange, kind-hearted weirdo who is fascinated by death and everything connected with it. For many years he has been employed in the Prague crematorium as a "corpse incinerator". On the basis of a distorted interpretation of Tibetan philosophy, he also understands killing as a help on the way to paradise, to return to the Light and infinite peace. The Book of the Corpse Burner is a masterful insight into the mental processes of a manipulated and self-manipulated man, in fact a limited weakling who, as if subtly, gradually becomes a human creature. In this case, the transformation of the story's protagonist's soul "fortunately" results in psychiatric illness. The leitmotif of the novel, however, is primarily the issue of racial hatred and collective guilt. The work is remarkable in thought and form, using only written language even in direct speech, the construction of the plot, frequent symbolic expression, by repeating phrases, that enhance the gradation and urgency of what is being said.