Rage & gloom

Jáchym Topol is interviewed by his translator Alex Zucker in the Quarterly Converstion.

I wouldn’t want to be seen as a “Holocaust writer.” That honor belongs to those who lived through the horrific events of the Second World War and survived. For me it’s the curiosity and amazement of a little boy crawling through empty, devastated buildings in a little village outside Prague with his friends—in other words, nowhere near the epicenter of the war. The Czech lands were spared the mass murders that took place in Ukraine and Belarus. And yet: the buildings left behind by the Germans who used to live here, the dark and empty “Jewish streets” in the nearest town—vacated, destroyed, eerie. Islands of decay amid the enthusiasm of “socialist development,” attics strewn with papers—newspapers, tattered books written in unfamiliar tongues, old suitcases and shoes. Whose were they? Why had they left them behind? The atmosphere of mystery, the questions left unanswered. Officially, no one said anything, but you would overhear comments—from neighbors, relatives—about people who used to be here, people who’d been murdered or expelled. I put it all together later on.