Michal Ajvaz

In a small village on the southern coast of Crete, the narrator meets a young man who tells him a history of his journey which took him from Prague as far as the Libyan sea. It is a voyage to uncover mysterious deaths of two brothers: one was murdered during the ballet performance, the body of the second was found...

In a junkyard on the outskirts of Prague, a painter stumbles across a mysterious wooden object. As he begins to notice the object's strange shape reproduced in various places around the city, he realises that it holds the key to uncovering the truth about the recent disappearance of a young girl. His attempts to understand the meaning of the object...