It is 2005 and in China is the year of the rooster, the zodiac sign of Tereza Boučková, author and protagonist. According to Chinese astrology, when the year of your zodiac sign occurs, not so easy months will follow. For the writer it is in fact the year in which her family definitively disintegrates. Tereza Boučková adopted two children, and later gave birth to a third. The two children entered her life when they were very young, welcomed in the belief that love and deep affection would lead to overcoming any difficulty. But the two boys, having reached puberty, escape the control of their parents, live without rules, committing thefts even in the house, triggering an explosive fuse of actions and reactions in which all the members of the family are involved, without the possibility of escape. The year of the rooster is the story of a disillusionment, when every attempt, every effort seems to fail, and the author tells and reflects, now with clarity, now with desperation, on the reasons and causes that have contributed to shattering her dream and to plunge her into a crisis that involves every sphere of her existence.
Tereza Boučková,
L’anno del gallo,
Translated by Laura Angeloni,
Miraggi Edizioni, 2021
p. 416