Найти книгу: "The Wooden King"

Czechoslovakia, 1939: Snow is falling over the city when the Nazis invade. Before the ice on the roads has a chance to melt, everything has changed for the country—and for Viktor Trn. It isn’t obvious at first. The day-to-day realities of occupation take time to sink in. After losing his job as a history professor, Trn remains optimistic, preserving what little he can of his family’s dwindling freedom. In his family’s small apartment, the radio brings worsening news as Europe surrenders to Germany. Friends are arrested, men are hanged in the local school. Trn must protect his young son, but understands leaving their homeland could prove too dangerous. Only when the air raids draw closer is Trn, a soft-spoken pacifist, pressured into making a choice: retreat to his decreasing sphere of familial safety, or join the resistance. Ultimately Trn finds himself caught between two titanic armies—the Nazis and the Soviets—and must decide how to save all that he loves. In the spirit of Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale and Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See , The Wooden King explores denial, desire, and family drama against the lyrically rendered backdrop of World War II, deftly navigating “the simple difference between what we do and what we ought to do” in the face of rising totalitarianism.

A bold and brilliant debut from a darkly funny new voice.Oskar is a minimalist composer best known for a piece called Variations on Tram Timetables. He is married to a Californian art dealer named Laura and he lives with two cats, named after Russian composers, in an Eastern European city.But this book isn't really about Oskar. Oskar is in Los Angeles, having his marriage dismantled by lawyers. He has entrusted an old university friend with the task of looking after his cats, and taking care of his perfect, beautiful apartment.Despite the fact that Oskar has left dozens of surreally detailed notes covering every aspect of looking after the flat, things do not go well.Care of Wooden Floors is about how a tiny oversight can trip off a disastrous and farcical (fatal, even) chain of consequences. It's about a friendship between two men who don't know each other very well. It's about alienation and being alone in a foreign city. It's about the quest for perfection and the struggle against entropy. And it is, a little, about how to take care of wooden floors.