THE WRONGED (2024)
A novel about inherited trauma. Martin Jun offers readers a deep
insight into each of us. Why do we sometimes face problems not really knowing where they come from? Can we inherit more than just our ancestors’ physical dispositions? The transgenerational transmission of trauma is a phenomenon gaining increasing attention and finally making its way into high-quality fiction. Along with the stories of the Hidden Children, it is also a central theme in Martin Jun’s latest novel, The Wronged.
The Wronged is set primarily in the present, or more accurately, the recent past of the pandemic era. Arne, a documentary filmmaker and the protagonist, meets the captivating Daniela, a woman grappling with relationship issues that she believes stem from her grandmother Jitka’s war trauma. Her inherited pain has affected not just her daughters but also her granddaughter. Arne becomes intrigued by the story of Jitka who, as a Jewish woman hidden with a non-Jewish family during the war, lived in near-total isolation from the outside world. Though saved from the Nazis, Jitka endured psychological scars from her “benefactors,” and the profound loss of her entire family during the war weighed heavily on her. Disillusioned by the pandemic restrictions and headed towards a divorce, Arne throws himself into researching Jitka’s life. What begins as a casual dive into old archives soon evolves into a gripping detective story. Why had the elderly Jitka lied about her relatives? And which wrong stands out as the most unforgivable? “Every family has a history. Before getting interested in trauma transmission, I had no idea that profound human experiences are written into the next generation. When I came across the true story of a little girl hidden during the war by a childless non-Jewish couple, I decided to tell it. But it was a tall order that eventually took five years,” says author Martin Jun of his new book.
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THE LIFE SENTENCE (2014)
This debut, “in which not a single word is meant seriously”, is sparing neither in its mentions of the work and person of a world-famous novelist of Czech origin nor in hyperbole, irony and intelligent humour. The result is a book whose unforced style is a joy to read, while its existential plot contains strong themes that urge us to reflect on a past that lives on. The novel was published by Labyrint in September 2014.
Second part – The Procreation of a Writer
(Extract)
Of course it was unfair: Michal could hardly be held accountable for his own conception. The role he played in it was so slight that it was invisible to the human eye. I suppose you want to know how Michal came to be conceived. You’re pretty interest in that, aren’t you? Suddenly you’ve stopped racing on; in fact you’re prepared to go back, against the flow of time.
Well, I’m going to disappoint you. There was nothing irregular about what went on before Michal’s conception. I’d like to be able to tell you, at the very least, that the sequence of events was jumbled, but unfortunately it was straightforward: meeting, sex, impregnation. One might wonder how Michal was born out of something so commonplace. But there is one juicy detail involved, and I think you should hear about it. At the moment of communion his father believed himself to be incurably sterile, and his mother considered herself to be incapable of pregnancy. As people don’t tend to boast about such things, neither knew this information about the other. It was enough to know it about themselves. When Michal’s father climbed into bed as an infertile man, he couldn’t have cared less for the extent of Michal’s mother’s fecundity or methods of contraception.
Michal’s mother had always thought her body unreliable. It had disappointed her at every turn, and she lived with a persistent sense of foreboding that it contained some serious defect. When the gynaecologist told her of her infertility, she was reassured by the irreversible nature of the verdict. When a few years later the gynaecologist (this time with an embarrassed smile) confirmed her gravidity, she understood this as a further betrayal by her body; it couldn’t even be relied upon not to work. And the father – how did he react? Was he proud of his ability to procreate, like a real man? No, Michal’s father did not rejoice in his fatherhood. Like a real man, he had doubts about his part in the whole business.
How could it be that Michal, who wasn’t Michal yet, broke through his parents’ double security cordon, showing himself to be disobedient before he was even born? Don’t expect any medical reports here. Everything I can tell you, you can learn at primary school. Sometimes two minuses make a plus. The first to learn this equation was Michal’s mother. When one day at lunch she broke the news to her own mother, Michal’s future grandmother, that lady’s eyes opened wide, as if she had just swallowed a fish bone. And her staring eyes saw a child who was announcing that she was expecting a child of her own. Michal’s mother‘s mother was dealt a shock, which her mind absorbed by shifting the whole family on one generation.
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MARTIN JUN
Martin Jun (1976) already made his mark on readers with his debut novel, Doživotí (Life Sentence, 2014), a formally elevated pun in which “not a word is meant seriously”. His second novel, Meteorit s rodokmenem (Pedigree Meteorite, 2019), about the life of a Central Bohemian village plagued by disasters of biblical proportions, received favourable reviews. His third novel, The Wronged, borrows from detective investigation tropes and adds a surprising plot twist. It’s the kind of novel that will haunt you long after you’ve finished it.