The Arsonist

By Egon Hostovksy and Egon Hostovský

Book Overview

Awarded the Czechoslovak State Prize for Literature in 1936, The Arsonist explores the world of youth against the backdrop of a small eastern Bohemian border town being menaced by an invisible firebug. Time and fire, their ability to reshape and destroy, are central. Encoded in echo, wind, and smoke -- in the gesture and in the whisper -- the true nature of events is too intangible and fleeting, too pregnant with the unknown, to provide any genuine certainty, and this is the real source of the townsfolk's terror. Their misguided attempts to identify the elusive arsonist ultimately reveal the emptiness and inflexibility of their own lives. One of the most distinctive voices in 20th-century Czech letters, Hostovsk 's mix of mysticism, irony, and wit, all leavened by the influence of Expressionism on his early work, results in a richly textured narrative amid an atmosphere of growing peril that serves as a harbinger of the catastrophe to come. This is the first English translation.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 8088628105
• ISBN13: 9788088628101
• Release Date: May 2025
• Publisher: Twisted Spoon Press
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Psychological Thriller

The book is well translated, and retains it's edge, concerning the book's material. I would recommend the author's book to anyone who enjoys a good mystery, and intellectual stimulation. The author conveys a rare insight into humanity, and the terror long past, yet still remembered, as indicated by the reprint of this book. The author is brilliant. Happy reading!

Teenage angst meets forebodings of WW2 and the Holocaust.

This is a novel that manages to remind the reader of the emotional turmoil of adolescence while providing a remarkably prescient snapshot of Czechoslovakia in 1935--Hostovsky has no illusions that war can be avoided or that Jews will be spared. Hostovsky does all of this and in language that is creative yet spare enough to make this a short, compact, novel.The main character is a 15-year-old who spends sleepless nights mulling over his choice of a career, brooding over his appearance which for the first time bothers him as he meets his older sister's girlfriend, or just being perplexed over why his mother doesn't entertain the same feelings for his father as he does for the wickedly beautiful young guest in his house.The protagonist could just as easily be the town itself, where a mysterious arsonist, or even arsonists, strikes and forces people to confront their own sense of anxious terror. It is confronting this terror that brings the town's -- and our young anti-hero's -- story to as much of a satisfactory but incomplete and short-lived story as you can expect in real life. There are no happy endings all round here--a poor barber whose wife dies then loses everything else, first his house and livelihood, then his mind and his health. Yet Hostovsky seems to spare him no pity, or maybe he's just making the point--if you think that's sad, see what's coming.The book came as a relief after I read a rash of novels by Booker Prize winners that were all, in comparison, cases of style with no substance. I would recommend it to any one looking for something a bit different and a refreshing change from all those polished but essentially run-of-the-mill bestsellers or crusty classics. It certainly renewed my ambition to travel to the Czech and Slovak republics one day.