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Summary
Summary
An intergalactic odyssey of love, ambition, and self-discovery.
Orphaned as a boy, raised in the Czech countryside by his doting grandparents, Jakub Prochv°zka has risen from small-time scientist to become the country's first astronaut. When a dangerous solo mission to Venus offers him both the chance at heroism he's dreamt of, and a way to atone for his father's sins as a Communist informer, he ventures boldly into the vast unknown. But in so doing, he leaves behind his devoted wife, Lenka, whose love, he realizes too late, he has sacrificed on the altar of his ambitions.
Alone in Deep Space, Jakub discovers a possibly imaginary giant alien spider, who becomes his unlikely companion. Over philosophical conversations about the nature of love, life and death, and the deliciousness of bacon, the pair form an intense and emotional bond. Will it be enough to see Jakub through a clash with secret Russian rivals and return him safely to Earth for a second chance with Lenka?
Rich with warmth and suspense and surprise, Spaceman of Bohemia is an exuberant delight from start to finish. Very seldom has a novel this profound taken readers on a journey of such boundless entertainment and sheer fun.
"A frenetically imaginative first effort, booming with vitality and originality . . . Kalfar's voice is distinct enough to leave tread marks." --Jennifer Senior, New York Times
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A Czech astronaut travels to an interstellar dust cloud in an attempt to redeem his family name in this wonderfully jubilant and touching debut novel. Beginning with the launch of the spaceship JanHus1, the novel promptly flashes back to explore the complex motivations of the titular spaceman, Jakub Prochazka. The son of a Communist sympathizer who tortured dissidents, Jakub chooses to leave his beloved homeland and wife, Lenka, to bring renown to the oft-overlooked Czech Republic. Once in space, Jakub encounters a possibly hallucinated alien spider named Hanus, who interrogates him on philosophies both existential and personal. Through their conversations, Jakub is forced to confront Lenka's new, seemingly happier life without him, as well as the ghosts of his father's violent past. Their debates come to a head in the dust cloud Chopra, where Jakub must risk his mission, earthbound life, and contact with Hanus. Written in an erudite comic style, the novel boldly switches tones like a spacesuit built for multiple planetary atmospheres: from the historical to the domestic, from out-of-this-world fables to brutal terrestrial reality. Agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Associates. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
With its interplanetary shenanigans and lessons in Czech history, this zany satirical debut is bursting at the seams "No one informs on the informer," Jakub Prochazka's father smugly informs him. Jakub's father is what's commonly referred to as a secret policeman (although they actually weren't that secret in Czechoslovakia), but despite rounding up citizens who aren't big on communism, he nevertheless has a clandestine fascination in Elvis Presley. You only have to read a few lines of Jaroslav's Kalfar's debut novel to realise that you are undoubtedly in the land of the satirist Jaroslav Hasek and film-maker Jiri Menzel. Jakub is the Bohemian spaceman of the title: in 2018 a proud Czech Republic fires him off from a launchpad in a potato field to investigate a mysterious cloud of cosmic dust that has appeared between Venus and Earth. There really was a Czech spaceman, Vladimir Remek, who in 1978 became a cosmonaut courtesy of the Russians, and Kalfar makes a joke or two at the expense of Moscow's space programme. Kalfar emigrated to the US as a teenager. He writes in English and lives in Brooklyn, but you wouldn't glean that from the text; it feels more like a superbly translated Czech novel. There are nods to Bohumil Hrabal and Josef Skvorecky, and the relentlessly inventive style made me think of the zaniness of Karel Capek's War with the Newts and his classic sci-fi play about Rossum's Universal Robots, R.U.R. The USA now boasts a literary subgenre of immigrant authors -- Gary Shteyngart, Aleksandar Hemon, Edwidge Danticat, Josip Novakovich, Ha Jin, Yiyun Li -- who, since arriving young in the US, have abandoned their mother tongue to write unmediated accounts of their home countries. It's as if an episode of Star Trek has crashed into Milan Kundera's The Joke No one can accuse Kalfar of showing a lack of ambition. His first novel is bursting at the seams: as well as being about interplanetary shenanigans, it is also a history of the Czech lands from the middle ages to the present and, in the second half of the book, a thriller. Although Jakub is in space, he carries his family problems with him, not least his disintegrating marriage, which he ambitiously attempts to mend from afar. Really the book should be entitled "Historian of Bohemia", as Jakub reflects on his family's lamentable past and his nation's woeful history. It's as if an episode of Star Trek has crashed into Milan Kundera's The Joke. Jakub's spacecraft is named after Jan Hus, the church reformer who, in 1415, was burned at the stake for heresy. Jakub is fond of the story that Hus (like Presley) defied accounts of his death, and lived out his life quietly and comfortably. And for Jakub, Hus is important because he is the first of many Czech leaders (Emil Hacha, Vaclav Havel) who have had to make unpleasant choices. Jakub, like Hus, is presumed dead, but manages to return, incognito, to Earth to enjoy his obituaries and to admire his own statue. Kalfar perhaps chose 2018, a not very futuristic future, as the date for Jakub's mission because, having given communism a firm drubbing, he wanted to reflect on current affairs. Wandering around Prague's Wenceslas Square, which saw all the revolutionary excitement in 1945, 1968 and 1989, Jakub ponders: "Will we ever again march on these bricks in national unity, fighting yet another threat to Europe's beating heart, or will this new Prague become an architecturally brilliant strip mall?" Jakub, and seemingly Kalfar, too, looks back wistfully to the glory days of Charter 77, when everyone had long hair, grooved to Frank Zappa and wrote "revolutionary essays", but he is well aware that the generation who lived through that era probably didn't find it so great at the time. The corruption of the nouveau riche has wreaked havoc in central and eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall and rouses Kalfar's ire. Spaceman of Bohemia should win many fans. It's Solaris with laughs, history lessons and a pig killing. I will be interested to see what Kalfar has to say about the US in the future. - Tibor Fischer.
Booklist Review
The Iron Curtain has fallen, and the Czech Republic is hoping to keep its dark history squarely in the rear-view mirror. A space program exploring Chopra, a mysterious gassy giant near Venus, promises to be just the ticket. The country rests its hopes on the shaky shoulders of Jakub Procházka, an astrophysicist who signs on only as reparation for his father's sins as a Communist collaborator. Looking to rewrite his personal history, Jakub becomes the country's first astronaut, traveling aboard the JanHus1 in the spring of 2018 to conduct experiments on Chopra. Unfortunately, even space can't untether Jakub from more earthly concerns. Jakub's marriage to Lenka, frayed as it already has been, is further tested. The unwitting astronaut explores existential questions with his own version of Tom Hanks' Wilson, a creature he names Hanua. Cutting to memorable scenes set in small-town Czechoslovakia and, later, in Prague, Kalfar's absurdist debut eloquently explores the crushing burden of having to carry your father's sins and its effects on a man whose sole ambition was to live an ordinary existence.--Apte, Poornima Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
SPACEMAN OF BOHEMIA, by Jaroslav Kalfar. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $15.99.) A Czech astronaut is shot into space to investigate a mysterious cloud, and leaves behind a trove of earthly baggage. As our reviewer, Hari Kunzru, put it: "But for all the strangeness of outer space, it is the writing about his home village, the place to which he longs to return and perhaps never can, that beats strongest in this wry, melancholy book." LOCKING UP OUR OWN: Crime and Punishment in Black America, by James Forman Jr. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.) Forman offers a masterly account of how black elected officials grappled with the drug crises and violence of the 1970s. The book, one of the Book Review's 10 best of 2017, argues that prison reform requires a new understanding of justice, one that emphasizes accountability instead of vengeance. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE, by Elizabeth Strout. (Random House, $17.) Nine linked stories complement Strout's earlier novel "My Name Is Lucy Barton," and follow a cast of interconnected characters who negotiate their desires and pain, and move past traumas. Our reviewer, Andrea Barrett, praised the book, which she described as "thick with details and even more profound in its rendering of the ways we save, or fail to save, one another." THE GIVERS: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, by David Callahan. (Vintage, $17.) A new crop of billionaires is quietly shaping society through their philanthropic ventures - including school choice, climate change and even marriage rights - with little oversight. Callahan knows the field, and can explain the preferences of tech billionaires versus Wall Street donors, for example. He sheds light on these donors' goals, their choices and how they're different from their forebears. THE KINGDOM, by Emmanuel Carrere. Translated by John Lambert. (Picador, $17.) Carrere takes on the subject of early Christians in the religion's founding days, imagining Paul and Luke after Christ's death. Along the way, he weaves in reflections on his own faith: Driven by despair more than 20 years ago, he became a devout Christian, praying and undertaking a rigorous study of the Bible, until the fervor faded a few years later. HOURGLASS: Time, Memory, Marriage, by Dani Shapiro. (Anchor, $15.) In this midlife appraisal, Shapiro explores the subtle transformations of her life, examining her hopes and exposing the fissures in her marriage, along with her belief that the relationship will prevail. Looking back on the origins of her relationship, Shapiro enters an eloquent dialogue with her earlier, younger selves.
Library Journal Review
Debut novelist Kalfar offers the near-future tale of the first Czech space mission, designed to explore an enigmatic cosmic dust cloud located somewhere between Venus and Earth. Lone spaceman Jakub Procházka has always struggled with the burden of being the child of a former party member and operative for the Soviet-backed Communist regime, and this story alternates between the present-day space adventure and Jakub's life before and after the Velvet Revolution. Integral to the narrative is the appearance of a man who was tortured by Jakub's father as well as the complications of Jakub's marriage to Lenka. The ongoing psychological challenge of the long space flight, Jakub's deteriorating relationship with Lenka, a surprising discovery of galactic proportions, and a narrow escape from death will keep readers highly engaged. VERDICT Jakub's coming-of-age story and improbable space flight combine to create an exhilarating concoction of history, social commentary, and irony. Reading like Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 crossed with a Milan Kundera novel, set in a Philip K. Dick universe, with a nod to Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, it manages to be singularly compelling while still providing mass appeal. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 10/3/16.]-Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.