L’eredità delle dee
The novel by the Czech writer Kateřina Tučková, translated in English as “The Žítková Goddesses“, has been published in an Italian translation. It is a story set in the Carpathian Mountains, in the community of Žítková, where a lineage of gifted women of exceptional powers has lived for a long time. The provident healers pass on their art from mother to daughter and are called “goddesses”. Dora Idesová, the last descendant of the family, does not possess any such art. She remains an orphan and lives with Aunt Surmena until the latter also disappears, and she is forced to move to boarding school. During her studies at the Brno Academy of Sciences in the 1990s, Dora dedicates herself to writing an essay on goddesses; it is through this during which she comes across Aunt Surmena’s dossier. From there, she begins a genuine historical investigation into the shadows and secrets of the past, from which Dora manages to reconstruct the tragic fate of her family, a destiny linked both to an ancient curse and to the events that marked the country Žítková and that will also affect her.
Kateřina Tučková,
L’eredità delle dee,
Keller Editore: Rovereto 2017,
416 p.