One of the many fine events prepared by the Czech Center in Belgrade was the visit of Klara Vlasakova, a young Czech writer, playwright, publicist, and author of film scripts, as well as radio plays and comics. Her novel "Fractures" was published by the Belgrade publishing house “Blum,” in a translation by Uroš Nikolić. The novel begins with the appearance of a sphere:

“When it descended to Earth—more precisely onto church property on the outskirts of town—the first people who saw it thought it was some kind of optical illusion; a refraction of light that disappears when one turns one’s head or when the sun slips behind a cloud. But it did not disappear; it remained floating a few dozen centimeters above the ground—a strange, white, glowing orb, nearly three meters in diameter.”

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This opening scene might suggest a science-fiction plot, but as the story unfolds the sphere becomes an object that simply exists on its own, without affecting the people who are struggling to survive. Oto is a family man who has lost his job and is forced to listen to corporate chatter about teamwork and positive thinking. Lara lives with her mother, who works herself to exhaustion at several jobs and eventually dies from fatigue and a hard life. Lara then continues her mother’s life pattern, though she eases the burden by taking medication. Others live in similar ways, striving to draw closer to the sphere, to extract some answer from it. By the end of the novel, the sphere remains silent, until the first cracks appear in it—a hint that something has begun to happen…

Vlasakova’s second novel, "Bodies", which deals with aging and the invisibility of the elderly, was published in the Czech Republic two years ago. The film rights have already been sold, and the film is being directed by Zuzana Kirknerova. Klara Vlasakova is currently writing a new novel, which, as she tells our newspaper, will be a story about identity.

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Fractures can be read on several levels. Can the dominant one be considered a critique of liberal capitalism?

When I began writing the book, I didn’t have a clear goal, but obviously that theme surfaced because lately we all live in a similar way. I wanted to describe the crisis the characters are going through, the state of the world, while at the same time offering a critique of the current form of capitalism.

It seems as if the characters are breaking down from job loss and exhausting work that serves no purpose but itself. But what contributes most to their alienation from one another?

The characters are indeed overburdened with work, pouring too much time and energy into sheer survival, from one day to the next, which is exhausting and familiar to us all. In addition, they lack social intelligence, because they cannot step outside themselves to see the bigger picture. When the sphere appears at the beginning of the novel, it becomes a great event that captures their attention and raises many questions. Yet frustration builds when it becomes clear that the sphere simply floats, offering no help.

The gaze fixed on the sphere is very personal—everyone projects into it what they have or lack within themselves. Is this the old question of salvation “according to our faith,” where everything depends primarily on the will to be saved?

What all the characters in Fractures share is that they are still capable of love. That is a wonderful trait, and it means that one can be saved, that life is not wasted or empty. To be tender toward someone, to care for them, as Oto and Ema care for their family members. But that is not enough; there are social problems beyond the family, so the characters suddenly face multiple crises at once. One of the key questions is how people come together around a common goal they want to achieve in society. While writing this book, I was aware that people would rather imagine the end of the world, the peak of crisis, the gulf between rich and poor—which has never been greater—than define clearly what kind of society they actually want to create. It’s as if we lack the time, means, capacity, and imagination to picture it. Yet deciding what kind of society we want to build, instead of the one we have, is the key question we must first ask ourselves, and then politicians, artists…

Are we also talking here about a crisis of ideas?

In recent decades, capitalism has managed to convince us that its way is the only way to organize life. I don’t believe that is true at all. We are constantly pressured with standards that say it is natural to accumulate as much money as possible, to care only for oneself and perhaps for a close circle of people. Yet throughout history, people have always sought to come together and create something big—something larger than themselves. I don’t think ideas are lacking; they exist among writers, philosophers, even various religions. But they must be taken seriously, not dismissed as crazy theories. If capitalism remains the only way, then we truly are condemned to extinction. It’s enough to consider the data on how much the climate is changing, how much damage is being done to nature and to the Earth as a whole.

Does the world need some unexpected force that suddenly appears and solves everything, like the sphere in your novel?

Michel Houellebecq wrote somewhere that we all expect from life something exalted, something that will give meaning to everything, something to lead us—but the ugly truth is that this never happens and that we must find meaning ourselves in the senselessness of everyday life. The same holds for the characters in my book, and probably for each of us. Rarely does an epiphany occur that makes everything completely clear. I think it is rather a matter of everyday work and constant conscious attempts to find meaning in a world that often seems entirely meaningless.

The situation in the book seems truly tragic; yet sharp irony and humor are noticeable. Do you see this story in the tradition of Czech humor?

I love dark humor, and my favorite is Franz Kafka, whom we Czechs like to claim as our own, even though he wrote in German—though, to be fair, he should be called a Central European writer, a world classic. When I read him as a teenager, I noticed how funny his prose actually is, even though his works were usually regarded as dark texts about bureaucracy and rigid rules. All that is also funny. Ultimately, everything depends on the level of interpretation and how one reads the work. A few months ago, I was a guest writer, and in addition to writing I also read Joyce’s "Ulysses," a book I had avoided my whole life as too complicated. Yet I was surprised to find how humorous it actually is. I didn’t try to analyze every sentence, to detect metaphors and parallels—I simply enjoyed reading it. Sometimes prejudices restrain us when it comes to certain classic, great works, which we see as dark or uninteresting. Perhaps it is especially Central European writers who combine the terrible with humor and irony.

Must things crack, break apart, in order for new values to be created?

I hope so. The ability to see those fractures is important both for the characters in my novel and for ourselves. Hope in change is essential, because everything is always in constant transformation.

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Politika.rs, September 19, 2025