Disruption of the plot

Emma and the search for roots in the turbulent seventies

Literary Critics' Prize 2024 for prose. Literature and life have a common denominator: Story.

It' s the 1970s and William " Mole Man" Lyttle digs a sentence in the tunnel under his house that will irreversibly affect the course of the world. " Our lives no longer feel like stories. " The protagonist of the autofiction novel is thirty-three-year-old Emma, who is trying to understand her Czech roots, come to terms with the death of her mother, and find answers to questions surrounding the disappearance of her partner. History does not flow around it, on the contrary, it accumulates and shatters. The water level is rising catastrophically among the remains and the fires are intensifying. Emma struggles through them in an attempt to escape a love that is both won and lost. In her story, we reach the end together or each in their own way, the story remains. As well as the question of whether storytelling can help a person cope with tragic events. Emma Kausc' s first novel shows that the author is an original storyteller who can not only tell stories colourfully, but also think about them.