A gripping family mystery that reveals how hidden pasts shape our present and transform our future.

Bohdana is an introverted young woman grappling with tensions in her family and a lingering question she can’t quite shake: on her last visit to the hospital, why did her gravely ill grandmother call her “Blanka,” and what potential hidden past is her family keeping from her? As Bohdana struggles to piece together the truth, another story unfolds alongside hers—that of Svatopluk Žák, a devoted builder of socialist society who hopes his beloved family’s future will be as brilliant as the star on the Soviet flag. When their two stories collide, hidden histories come to light.
 
In The Silent Years, Czech author Alena Mornštajnová weaves a rich, intimate family drama that reveals how easily a carefully constructed world can shatter and transform in an instant. Set in postwar Czechoslovakia, the novel follows a human story against a larger backdrop of a society in upheaval.

Alena Mornštajnová is one of the Czech Republic’s most widely read contemporary novelists. Her debut novel Blind Map was nominated for the Czech Book Prize. Her subsequent works include The Little Hotel, Hana, and The Silent Years. Hana, her most acclaimed novel, has been translated into numerous languages and was longlisted for the 2021 EBRD Literature Prize. Alžběta Belánová earned her English degree with high honors from Rutgers University and was awarded the Schaeffer Fellowship in Literary Translation at the University of California, Irvine. Her translations have appeared in Asymptote, B O D Y, and in The Book of Prague. She is the translator of Lidmila Kábrtová’s short story collection Places in the Dark, also published by Seagull Books.

1.Prologue
2.The Silent Years