Black rusalka

A bleak winter landscape in the Novohradské Mountains at the beginning of the 1990s. The barbed wire has vanished, and the Red Army units are preparing to withdraw. For two men with a dark past – border guard lieutenant Šturc and Soviet garrison major Tretyakov – a lifelong career is ending, and a tough fight for survival is beginning. Young librarian Tomáš, on the other hand, sees an opportunity to change his life for the better. Their fates are linked by the Black Rusalka, a mysterious statuette made in a local glassworks where Count Buquoy's magnificent collection of hyalith glass was once created – a collection all three men are searching for. A story gradually unfolds, stretching back to the 19th century, involving other inhabitants of the village of Černé Domky, and especially the fateful Rút and the enigmatic Petra. Everyone is heavily affected by the collapse of the old world and the legacy of a region scarred by violence, which has become desolate and a no-man's land. Here, madness can easily take hold of a person, or one might even lose their life. This evocatively written debut offers a historical thriller from a time that radically changed people's destinies.

Martin Müller
(1988) is a trained screenwriter and a journalist by trade. He is a long-standing member of the Ostrava-based artistic group Bezejmenná skupina (Nameless Group). He has been published in magazines such as Host, Psí víno, and Texty. The novel Černá rusalka is his debut work.