Jaroslav Rudiš: ‘Where the Dead Speak’

Reading from the novel

In collaboration with Buchkrone at Zittau Market

Lorenzo, Caspar and Miss Detroit: three friends – all somewhere between middle age and world-weariness – set off on a journey through the heart of Central Europe. In the boot: the bones of a Nazi criminal, which they have stolen from a Berlin cemetery to get there before the looting Reich citizens. What begins as an absurd mission turns into a road trip through cemeteries and into the past. Whilst Lorenzo tries to write a poem about dead European poets in the back seat, Miss Detroit dreams of becoming a cemetery botanist. And Caspar recalls his great-uncle, who died tragically in the war whilst still a child and has haunted the family’s history ever since. With every kilometre they travel, the three grow closer and yearn for an answer to the question that grows louder with every grave they pass: what do the dead tell us when we listen to them?

A fast-paced novel brimming with laconic humour: Jaroslav Rudiš sets off on a whirlwind odyssey along the borders of central Europe and the things that bind us together.

Photo credit:
Photo of Jaroslav Rudiš ©Vojtěch Veškrna

• Haus Zittau, Main Hall
• Guest performance