TITLE
AD ACTA - Original Title: Ad Acta by Patrik Ouředník, 129 p., paperback, e-book, Serbian, ISBN: 978-86-6457-031-2
AD ACTA
Ad Acta is the experimental detective novel. The protagonist, is a misanthropic, bug-collecting widower who speaks in bogus Biblical quotations and doesn't have to much tolerance for other people faults. His womanizing days are mostly over, but he’s still plagued by lewd thoughts. Some crimes are committed and investigated by the policeman, chief inspector Vilém Lebeda. But this very multi layered novel is also a humorous-critical look at the Czech character and nation over the past decades, into the post-Communist present -- as well as an entirely literary game. Instead of following the examination of a crime step-by-step, Ouředník cuts his narrative into forty brief chapters, each told from a different perspective. The first chapter is a transcript of a chess match, and others consist of eavesdropped conversations, interior monologues, dreams, and direct harangues from the author. Ouředník ask questions beyond the narrow confines
- f crime and punishment. Over the course of "Ad
Acta", it becomes clear that it’s not just retirees and apartments who are at risk in Prague: language itself is in peril. There is strong satrirical bite here. Ouředník finds plenty to mock in twenty-first century Prague: German tourists, moronic political slogans, barbaric poetry.