Tomáš Zmeškal
BIOGRAPHY OF
A BLACK-AND-WHITE LAMB
(Torst, 2009)
335 pages
Afro-Czech author Tomáš Zmeškal’s debut—published in Alex Zucker’s translation as Love Letter in Cuneiform by Yale University Press in 2016—showcased his skills as a storyweaver with a penchant for the fantastic. In his second novel, Biography of a Black-and-White Lamb, Zmeškal tightens his focus to look at the childhood and teen years of Václav and Lucie, biracial twins growing up in 1970s and ’80s Communist Czechoslovakia.
Although the two children’s grandmother raises them as best she can after their parents die in a car crash, no amount of love can prepare Lucie and Václav for the difficulty of navigating a society that is not merely white-majority, but cramped by the conformity of totalitarianism. Zmeškal crafts his mosaic with skill to take in the lives of the twins as well as their extended family, bringing politics to bear with crushing impact one moment, then allowing it to subside again, laying bare the rich interiors of the characters and their relationships.
As in his first novel, the author again demonstrates his ear for different voices: the language and jargon of children and grown-ups, bureaucrats, doctors, laborers, intellectuals, and musicians.
The author: Tomáš Zmeškal (b. 1966) was born in Prague to a Czech mother and a Congolese father. In 1987 he left to live in London, where he studied English language and literature at King’s College. He returned to Prague in the 1990s, after the collapse of communism, and since then has worked mainly as a writer and teacher of creative writing. He has published two novels, one work of literary nonfiction, and numerous radio plays. His debut novel, Milostný dopis klínovým písmem (2008; Love Letter in Cuneiform), won both the European Union Prize for Literature and the Josef Škvorecký Prize. His second novel, Životopis černobílého jehněte (2009; Biography of a Black-and-White Lamb), was shortlisted for the Josef Škvorecký Prize. His works have been translated into six languages.
SAMPLE
Mr. Trégl the waiter, the oldest person in the world, was also totally bald. Not only was he old, but so was the skin on his head and neck. At the point where his head joined his neck, it was folded into little creases. Even when Václav stood in front of the mirror at home in their bathroom and tried to wrinkle the skin on his neck like Mr. Trégl’s, it just wouldn’t stay, which of course only heightened the feeling of awe that Václav felt in his presence. Mr. Trégl’s skin was like a cross between an elephant’s and a lizard’s, and he covered it over with a snow-white, flawlessly fitting twin-breasted jacket, which looked more like another layer of skin than an ordinary garment. He wore a black bowtie around his neck and black pants, sharply creased, on his legs. His fingers were long and carried the coffees, glasses of wine, and desserts calmly and deliberately. However, what fascinated Václav even more than how Mr. Trégl looked was the way he moved. He never made a quick move. Without the twins’ even knowing, he would suddenly appear by their side, slowly look them up and down, then bring their soda pops or take away their empty plates. His gait was on the border between noiselessly skating across the carpet and levitating a few inches above the ground. One time Václav couldn’t resist and laid an ambush for Mr. Trégl, waiting until he was near their table, then intentionally bumping his elbow into an empty soda glass. Mr. Trégl slowly and unhurriedly bent over and caught the glass less than an inch above the carpet. He didn’t give so much as a glance to Václav, continuing his regular rounds of the other tables and guests, while in his left hand, lightly and seemingly without a thought, clenching the glass that should have broken to smithereens. Václav tried to comprehend this balancing act, but just couldn’t do it. The whole catching of the suddenly falling glass by the slow-moving, oldest person the twins had ever seen was a mystery to him. Václav attempted a similar feat at home, and the glass fell on the rug twice before, on the third try, it smashed—to smithereens. Now he was practically certain that somehow Mr. Trégl must have known in advance what he had in mind. Though he didn’t confide his belief to anyone, he became convinced that Mr. Trégl must be able to read people’s minds, at least the ones sitting in the café. There was no other explanation. At first the thought of it actually frightened him, so he tried to think only of good things, until everything fell back into the old routines. Occasionally, when one of the twins succeeded in dropping something in their lap, their grandmother would notice, raise her eyes to Mr. Trégl, and he knew exactly what had happened, each and every time. As if the world had long since ceased to hold any mysteries for him. With one simple gesture he would point the way, and the pastry-stained Václav or Lucie would follow him to the cloakroom, or the anteroom by the kitchen, where the catastrophes of quick-drying chocolate and sugar-loaded soda pop were ruthlessly eliminated.
Please direct all inquiries about this project and requests for the full sample to [email protected].
