Journey to the South.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ajvaz, Michal.

Contributor:

Oakland, Andrew.

Series:

Czech Literature

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (358 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

La Vergne : Deep Vellum Publishing, 2023.

Summary:

In a small village on the southern coast of Crete, the narrator meets a young man who tells him a history of his journey which took him from Prague as far as to the Libyan sea. It is a voyage to uncover mysterious deaths of two brothers: one was murdered during the ballet performance, the body of the second one was found by Turkish fishermen at the Asia Minor shores. On the move, the amateur detective is accompanied by one of the brothers´ girlfriend. They have to work out a lot of traces, clues and rebuses - seemingly meaningless clusters of letters in the picture of a Hungarian painter, fragments of words created in the sea by bodies of phosphorescing worms, puzzling shapes of jelly sweets found in a small shop in Croatia or the plot of an American sci-fi thriller movie, which the protagonists watch in the cinema in Rome suburb. Such leads send the heroes from town to town, the plot takes part on night trains and many places in Europe - in Bratislava, Budapest, Lublan, on the islands of Mykon and Crete... With the search for the murderer of both the brothers many other stories are interconnected, and they take the readers to even more distant places of the Earth: Moscow, Boston, Mexico City...

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright

Table of Contents

Part One: Two Brothers

Libyan Sea I

1. Loutro

2. Martin

3. All Because of Kant

Murder at the Theater I

1. The Tortoise

2. First Act

3. Second Act

4. After the Crime

5. Investigation

6. Kristýna

7. Plinth of the Stalin Monument

Tomáš and Petr I

1. Father

2. Tomáš

3. Poems in Drawers

4. Petr

5. Visit from the Darkness

6. Sorcerer's Apprentice

7. Snow in the Yard

Escape to Parca I

1. A Strange City

2. First Pedestrian

3. Stranger in the City

4. History of Parca

5. Conversation with an Assistant Lecturer

6. The Movement

7. History of Lygdology I: From Ancient Times to the Seventeenth Century

8. History of Lygdology II: From Romanticism to the Present Day

9. The Lygdian Movement Spreads

10. Lygdian Gods

11. The Lygdian Movement at the University

12. Rita

13. Waterfront Encounter

14. Marius in Love

15. Dragon of the Void

16. Demonstration

17. Fighting

18. Green Room

19. Painting

20. Hector and Hella

21. Visit

22. Maya Fresco

The Story of the Wire Book I

1. Paradise Sonata

2. Flying Eye

3. Magazine Office and Villa

4. North Floriana

5. Martial Law and War

6. Cormorant Bay

7. Wire in the Sea

8. Conservation Institute

9. A Nation Reads The Captive

10. Critical Opinion

The Captive I

1. Building

2. Glass Nest

3. Leo in the Tower

4. Celebrating a Birthday

5. Game

6. Anxiety

7. Caged

8. Butterfly Woman

9. Rescue Expedition

10. Captives

11. Isolation

12. Three Sisters

13. Flight

14. Uptown

15. Life at the Motel

16. Diamanta's Story

17. A Natural History of Daemons

18. Fortress

19. Skaters

20. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

21. Chase

22. Life on the Run.

23. Linda in Vienna

24. Professor

25. Winter

26. Race along the Canals

27. Daemon and Robot

28. Motel

Linda's Lament

The Captive II

1. Secret Clinic

2. Ciudad de México

3. Cantina

4. Ricardo

5. Automobiles

6. Pursuit

7. Decision

8. Fountain

9. Waiting

10. Colors

11. Coyoacán, Malibu

The Story of the Wire Book II

1. City in the Jungle

2. Mausoleum

3. Raid

4. Meeting on a Terrace

5. Defeat

Escape to Parca II

1. Conversation at Night

2. Hector and Rita

3. The Sickness Returns

4. Locked-away Book

5. Sylva

6. Meeting in a Café

7. Space Born Out of Words

8. Words Born Out of Space

9. Fame

10. Late Work

11. Sickness and Despair

12. Encounter at a Station

13. Imaginary Army

14. Conspirators

15. Albert

16. Olive Street

Tomáš and Petr II

1. Song of Emptiness

2. The Diagram

3. The Work-Network

Murder at the Theater II

Libyan Sea II

Part Two: Cities and Trains

The Story of the Demons of the Night Train and the Corso Café

1. Lassitude

2. Magazine

3. The Mystery of the Lygdian Shell

4. Night Train

5. Lights and Voices

6. Sun on a Square

7. Day and Night in Bratislava

The Story of Meditating Ants, Gunfire on Gogolevsky Boulevard, and the Sociologist Who Tries to Hang Herself

1. Balcony

2. Lost Week

3. Apartment in Víziváros

4. Meditating Ant

5. Ant under Arrest

6. Snow-covered Ant

7. The Ant and the Grand Canyon

8. City

The Story of the Underwater Lettering, the Keter Sapphire and the Beautiful CIA Agent

1. Room with a River View

2. Photograph

3. Ljubljanica

4. Feast

5. Wryneck

6. Tree of Life

7. The Nefarious John Wind

8. Maharajah's Ball

9. In the Kabbalistic Tower

10. The Five Highest Sefiro

11. The Sephirah Keter

12. Moving Reliefs.

The Story of the Colored Threads, the Harmony of the Universe, and the Fruit-gum Candies

1. Colored Threads

2. The Lygdian Shell Makes Another Appearance

3. Sound of the Sea

4. Journey to Croatia

The Story of the Dockside Cranes and the Weiner Café

1. Pula

2. Weiner Café

3. The Rebus

The Story of the Irascible Sculptor

1. Merry Elephant

2. In the Director's Office

3. Party on the Square

4. Sufferings of a Young Artist

5. Night in San Benedetto

The Story of Entoptic Images, Monsters of the Cosmos, and Hot Walls

1. Sorrow in Trastevere

2. Images under Eyelids

3. Judith Greenfield

4. Monastery in the Himalayas

5. What Monastery Superior Said

6. Cocoon

7. At the Hotel

8. Hot Walls

9. Church on an Island

10. Message in Candy

11. The Magnolia

The Story of the Sparkling Labyrinth, the Secret Name, and the Cold-shy Swede

1. Stations and Harbors

2. Mykonos

3. Four Letters

The Story of Three Lazy Days in Chania

1. On Deck

2. Arrival in Crete

3. Chania

The Story of the White Yacht

1. Evening at the Harbor

2. Tomáš and Irena

3. A Balcony in Dobřichovice

4. Mother

5. Yacht

6. The Boat Leaves Port

7. Hate

8. Fight

9. Last Breakfast

10. End

11. Tomáš's Letter

12. Scenes on Deck

13. Kidnapped

14. Mykonos Fortress

15. Package from Italy

16. Irena's Letter

17. Flight

18. Lefka Ori

19. Gallery in the Mountains

20. Dream of a Trip to Prague

The Story of the Journey to Gavdos

1. The Point of the Journey

2. Signs

3. Noise of the Void

4. Current and Chance

5. Kristýna

6. Gavdos

Back Cover.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Ajvaz, Michal Journey to the South

ISBN:

9781628974713

OCLC:

1375297626