Living Parallel

This novel about conflicts of conscience explores an unusual love triangle of a man, a woman, and the Czech countryside. Finally winning the heart of an artist named Olga, a woman he first fell in love with 20 years earlier, Mikuláš must now make a decision between her and his homeland.

Mikuláš is an architect who has spent his career designing prefab high-rise apartment blocks in Prague, when his dream has been to design garden apartment complexes in the countryside that he loves. He has been leading a parallel life, turning his anger into indifference and seeking satisfaction in nature, aesthetic experiences, unrequited love, and ideals about architecture. He has lived in what he considers an oasis of the soul. But to get to this oasis, he has capitulated so often and so deeply, it is nearly impossible for him to make an important decision about whether to go or stay.

Filled with striking images, fresh metaphors, and colorful language, this is a contemplative novel, a melancholic reflection on how to live so that one's life has meaning.

Alexandr Kliment is the author of numerous novels, story collections, children's books, plays, and screenplays. "Living Parallel" was the first of his books to appear in English. He is so highly respected among Czech writers, that when we asked Ivan Klíma for a blurb, he sent an entire foreword.

"Kliment honors the complexities of Svoboda's dilemma with poetic delicacy. The language is gorgeous, often languid and dreamlike, yet always vivid and original."
Prague Post

"The tiny Czech Republic continues to astound the world with the quality of its literature, and this novel, which introduces English speakers to Kliment, is yet another example. exquisite prose."
Library Journal

"Elegant, absorbing, and simply beautiful [by] the aristocrat of Czech dissident literature."
Josef Škvorecký

"In this finely wrought novel the powerful pull of home and beautyin all its formsis affirmed."
Publishers Weekly

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