Thousands of Plateaus
They will encounter Dante’s ghost on the carousel in Ravenna, a hovering spa guest and talking paintings. They will learn about the importance of pigeons to Polish history, about the strange reproductive behavior of the axolotl (the Mexican walking fish) and how to employ the game „Rock paper scissors“ to find answers to questions you would never think about.
The hallmark of the whole set is diversity – of time, place and narrative style. As the title reveals, the book can be seen as a critical response to the philosophical work A Thousand Plateaus – Capitalism & Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari which also makes an appearance in the title story. Sylva Fischerová enters into a dialogue with the thoughts of the two French philosophers, who dealt with social phenomena. She offers her own point of view based on observation of social situations, which she masterfully expresses through artistic means.
Sylva Fischerová's new short stories are relatively brief, but obviously cut to the chase, to a crystal-clear whole, which is carried by atmosphere and style, and at the same time opens up deep questions and poses unprecedented, innovative paradoxes. As a whole, it is built vividly, pithily, playfully, but also in a sophisticated manner: the high is intertwined with the low, the past with the present, dialogue with the narrative, literature with life. The result is a remarkable set of stories, which does not stoop to mere recycling of tried and tested methods. This book by Sylva Fischerová is one of the highlights of contemporary Czech prose.
