A novella IN CZECH (for copyright, please write to the author at reiner.cz@gmail.com)

The novella Spa is Reiner’s prose debut. It is such a fluent read that one is tempted to read it quickly. But if we wish to savour the author’s lyrical style and appreciate the mystery of the story, we must return to it and take our time over it, take pleasure in each metaphor, sentence and scene.

… The light, gloomy, sometimes magical tone of the novella Spa is illuminated by episodes of great subtlety. Whilst wringing a humour fraught with meaning from school, bar and marriage, Reiner presents with great sensitivity moments from the life of a young man suffering from a terminal illness. The novel is set in the city centre, trams and housing estates of Brno as well as in the spa town of Třeboň. There is little doubt that the author has drawn on his own experiences, but it would be wrong to search only for impressions of a particular past.

Brno’s Martin Reiner is the author of four volumes of poetry. After the novella Spa, which puts him on a footing with authors a generation his senior, such as Michal Ajvaz and Jiří Kratochvil, Reiner the prose writer will take a long break. But he will certainly be back.