The Damage / Pavane for a Deceased Infanta

Libuse Moníková's early novels, published in Germany in 1981 and 1983, cover the same topic: a world of suppression and the attempts of two women to resist it – a university teacher from Prague, specializing in Franz Kafka and Arno Schmidt, who, in a time of crisis, feigns disability and restricts herself to a wheelchair; and Jana, the student, who kills the policeman who raped her. Only a few years after the Prague Spring these two books made Libuse Moníková, born in Prague but writing in German, a literary force to be reckoned with. They are now available again in a single volume.