Winter bees

The narrator of the novel, Egidius Arimond, is convinced that everything in the hive is managed in the best way for the survival and well-being of the whole. A solitary beekeeper and former gymnasium teacher from a German town near the Belgian border, he devotes considerable space to reflections on the life of bees in his diary entries, which he keeps from January 1944 to May 1945. Beekeeping is an age-old tradition in the Arimond family, and for Egidio it is also the main source of livelihood during the last months of the war. However, besides the quiet buzzing of the bees, he increasingly hears the roar of enemy bombers.

 The protagonist of the novel is a regular visitor to the local library, where he searches for the fate of his 15th century ancestor, the Benedictine monk Ambrosio, who was the first to start beekeeping in the region. However, he fell in love with a country girl, with whom he longed to start a family, and had to leave the monastery. In addition to a passion for bees and beautiful women, Ambrosio's descendants also inherited epilepsy, which appeared again and again in the family history.

 For Egidio, living in Nazi Germany, the disease is a stigma that led to his suspension from his teaching post and forced sterilization. As one of the few men not called to the front, he takes advantage of the situation and indulges his weakness for women. But it hides an even more dangerous secret: uses his excellent knowledge of the rugged terrain of the borderlands to help persecuted Jews escape to Belgium.

 By confronting the peaceful life of bees with the destructive actions of human society, Norbert Scheuer has succeeded in creating an exceptional and award-winning anti-war novel that does not lack suspense, love drama or the delicate poetry of nature.

 The book is accompanied by black and white illustrations of war planes by the author's son Erasmus.

The German writer entered the literary scene in the 1990s with collections of short stories and poems. His novel titles, which have been repeatedly nominated for the German Book Prize, have earned him critical acclaim and popularity. The author has set the story of several of his books in the West German Eifel Highlands, where he lives. The novel Winter Bees, which Norbert Scheuer (*1951) first introduced to Czech readers, is set there. For this work, which was also translated into Danish, Dutch and French, he received the Wilhelm Raabe Prize.