Pérák
Rights sold:
GermanThere is war and the Nazi rulers in Prague are very worried: a fighter with seemingly supernatural powers moves through the city, instilling fear in the occupiers. The athletic superhero, whispered about on street corners, can leap unusually far and high. He uses his skills to sabotage the German war economy. He is also involved in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler’s man in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The name of the mysterious hero is Frank Pérák – the Springheeled Jack of Prague. In the novel, he falls in love with the beautiful resistance fighter Jitka, who fights intrepidly at his side against the occupiers. At the same time he attempts to solve the riddle of his own identity. So who is Pérák, the superhero from Prague? The answer offered by Petr Stančík is beyond imagination.
Peter Stančík embellished the supernatural ability of Pérák to crush enemies and has created a story so sophisticated, that Superman and Batman pale in comparison.
Stančík relates Pérák in a Tarantino-esque, mischievous, refreshingly disrespectful manner, making the Pérák myth a mixture of pulp fiction and historical essay writing. The book is beautifully illustrated (with contemporary Pérák comics) and garnished with annotations. This novel, which reimagines the Flak gun as a "steel penis in a stolid defensive posture" or reinvents Göring's Carinhall as a completely edible gluttonous dystopia, brings with it a rare humour which Czechs have been largely lacking when dealing with these traumatic topics.
This book is fabulous pulp-surreal fiction, very amusing to read.
The author and the publisher have succeeded in creating a small opus that appeals to a diverse target audience: comics fans and cultural scientists, science fiction enthusiasts and (hobby) historians, or simply people who enjoy multi-layered and unusual literary works. The story is accompanied by a large quantity of background material (photos, posters, graphics), demonstrating how lifelike the story of a defender can be.
