City, Sister, Silver

City, Sister, Silver is the English title of the novel by Jáchym Topol, originally published in Czech in 1994 as "Sestra", and published in English translation, by Alex Zucker, in 2000 (Catbird Press).The Czech original has been described, by Ivan Klima, as "a first attemp at expressing, in a profound and extremely individual way, the feelings of an entire generation ...", with central character Potok in a sense embodying the simultaneous feelings of alienation and enormous possibilities of a young adult at the time of the Velvet Revolution and its aftermath.This is a complex, frequently dark, and often deliberately confusing, novel, with the English translation being described by Samuel Thomas as "a difficult experience for a reader unfamiliar with Czech culture [but] beautiful [...] and consistently inventive" [ Samuel Thomas. "City, Sister, Silver." In: "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die", Ed. Boxall, P., Quintet Publishing, London, 2006, p. 838 ] . By all accounts the Czech original is no less challenging or inventive, with Topol making the most of new freedoms to play fast and loose with the conventional rules of written Czech, to the extent that the original Czech publishers issued the book with a disclaimer stating the author's intent to "capture language in its unsystematicness and out-of-jointness" [ Alex Zucker. Translator's Preface, "City, Sister, Silver", Catbird Press, North Haven, Connetticut 2000, p. vii ] .

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