Heavy Souls

A novel about life's mistakes, music, and the clash between boomers and the younger generation

Johanes is approaching fifty. He makes a living clearing out flats, is divorced, and shares custody of his teenage daughter. He's also caught up in a sex scandal. And, above all, he has three friends with whom he shares a love for heavy metal and a frustration with the modern world, which, for various reasons, they no longer understand.

Johanes's stereotypical life, filled with hard physical labour and pub chatter, is regularly disrupted only by his daughter, Žofie. The more inexperienced she is, the more progressive her views are about her father and his generation's way of life. Especially since Johanes has no problem with eating meat and still sees women as objects. But worse is that he doesn't understand himself either—is he just an ordinary guy who, through a series of unfortunate circumstances, has failed a little, or is he a despicable sexual predator? And what matters more: how Johanes himself deals with his transgression, how his daughter does, or perhaps how society as a whole does? And how do humour, perspective—and a rediscovered electric guitar—help him through it all?

From the author of the successful novel Havířovina