Zdena Tomin The Coast of Bohemia

Annotation

Bohemia has no coastline. This is just one of the paradoxes in The Coast of Bohemia, a chilling thriller which has at its heart, an intensely beautiful and unusual love story. Zdena Tomin, the author of Stalin's shoe and herself a former spokesperson for Charter 77, tells in this novel of the day-to-day experiences of dissidents in a repressive Eastern European country - university professors pursuing new careers as manual labourers, artists working as roadsweepers, idealistic young people living beneath the cracks of the state monolith and of their struggles to hold secret meetings, issue proclamations and fight for basic freedoms and self-respect. Always present, both in the streets and in the mind, are the secret police, whose old-fashioned thuggery is now laced with the sinister persuasiveness of the new elite. The Coast of Bohemia takes place within one wintry season. But it is a winter's tale in more sense than one. At its heart is the delicate but fiercely possessive relationship between the narrator, a translator and Norma, a captivatingly innocent girl, mentally damaged yet full of humour and sharp insights into their situation. Zdena Tomin has in this novel achieved a remarkable feat, to write passionately about public oppression and yet tenderly about the strength of private emotions in ordinary people.