捷克: A Brief History of Living Forever

When Adéla contracts a terminal illness, her thoughts turn to Tereza, the daughter she gave up at birth, forty years earlier. Leaving behind her moody, grown son, Roman, in their rural Czech village, she tracks down her daughter in New York City. But the America of 2029, with its authoritarian government and closed borders, is a different place from the country she experienced as a young woman, when she eloped with a filmmaker and starred in his cult sci-fi movie.

Tereza, the star researcher for a secretive biotech company hellbent on discovering the key to immortality, is overjoyed to reunite with her mother. But before she can find a cure, her mother dies mysteriously and is whisked away to a mass grave for undocumented immigrants in the swampy Florida wastelands. Distraught, Tereza travels to the Czech Republic to convince Roman, the brother she’s never met, to defy the law and the odds and return their mother’s remains to Czech soil.

Narrated from the beyond by Adéla, A Brief History of Living Forever is a high-wire act of storytelling that demonstrates once more Jaroslav Kalfař's endless powers of invention. By turns insightful, moving, and funny, the novel blends an immigrant mother's heartbreaking journey through the American dream with her children's quest to reclaim her from a country that would erase any record of her existence. Above all, it is a reminder that neither space nor time can sever our connection to the ones we love.

作者:

Jaroslav Kalfař
Jaroslav Kalfař was born one year before the Velvet Revolution in Prague, Czech Republic. He immigrated to the United States at the age of fifteen and learned the English language through novels and cartoons. He has earned an MFA from New York University, where he was a Goldwater Fellow and a nominee for the inaugural E.L. Doctorow Prize. His debut novel, Spaceman of Bohemia, was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and has been translated into nine languages. He lives in Brooklyn.

朗讀者:

Ellie Law (羅正心) is an actress and a graduate of the School of Drama at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, majoring in Acting, with additional training in stage performance in Boston, USA. She graduated in 2020 and has since appeared in productions including Quills, Sweet Madarin(and its revival), Come Out! – A Physical Cabaret. Her stage credits at the Academy includes Spring Awakening, RENT and more, and she received a nomination for Outstanding Actress at the 11th “The Hong Kong Theatre Libre” for her role as Ilse in Spring Awakening.
 

場地:

Mount Zero Books
6C Tai Ping Shan St, Sheung Wan