The first volume of the award-winning original Czech fantasy on the border of political and psychological thriller
The Altschul Method, the first volume of Chaim Cigan's tetralogy Where the Foxes Say Goodnight, may have the outer framework of a political and psychological thriller, but readers will find much more.
In a brilliantly written suspenseful story spanning different countries, continents, historical eras and alternate worlds, the author confronts the reader with the implications of postmodern technology developed in the future from the medieval cabal. It is the Middle Ages, Jewish thought, culture and history that the author masterfully illuminates from surprising angles. Also, what we perceive in the first part as a reality close to us, full of references to our historical experience of the end of the era of normalisation and the transformation into a somewhat better world, is sometimes absurdly distorted with a slight irony. The book's Jewish heroes are extremely vital, comic, believable in their aspirations and possibilities, and almost familiar in their unheroicness. Gypsy's readable book - which will appeal to those interested in centuries of Jewish culture and thought as well as lovers of suspenseful prose - is full of humor, playfulness, and existential depth.
