What Happens in a Tormented Person? A Czech Novel on COVID-19

The narrator, an unfaithful department head of a large firm, identifies as Jewish.Along wiht Christmas, they also celebrate Jewish holidays at home, but everything, including the occasional visit to the synagogue, is emptied of mere observance of traditions. Often not even that. Perhaps only once, when not only reality but also his ideas are collapsing, he tries to find some kind of kinship in faith. Again, this is only a vague expectation, the protagonist lacks targeting and awareness of transcendence as such.

The book does not thematize Judaism in this or any other – perhaps social or ancient – way. The narrator could easily be an atheist and nothing would have to change in the almost three hundred page story. So why does this line remain in the prose?

The primary answer might potentially be a reference to beneš’s first novel, The Slight Loss of Loneliness from 2023.It won the Magnesia Litera Debut Award and whose main character was also of Jewish origin. It was a story of a young man returning from a concentration camp, his Jewishness was the very essence of the matter. What about in the corporate? just nothing.

The key to the disintegration of the narrator’s personality and his relationships may be precisely this separation from context, a lack of interest in the content of one’s own self.In such an surroundings it is tough to assign any meaning to anything. “What exactly is the point of naming things if we can’t do anything about them at all?” asks Eli beneš.

Everything will be great is a readable book in the best sense of the word.It thematizes responsibility for the breakdown of a relationship, which is always better perceived by the other person, whether it is a life partner or a literary character. And there is not so much vanity in it that one cannot survive even without hope. It won’t be great, but at least it will be something.

Eli Beneš works as a development manager of Seznam’s radio stations. He was born in 1986.