I was probably the wrong reader for this book - I tried it as I love scifi and saw it had been shortlisted for a major award in that category. However, it isn't really scifi, but more literary fiction, of which I am not fond.
It was interesting, mostly, at the start, but then became rambling and wordy.

I don't really know what I was expecting when I started this book, but it certainly wasn't what I read. It felt like the whole way through the book I was waiting for the "and it was all a dream" revelation, never quite knowing if I was meant to believe what was happening or not.

Jakub is the first Czech astronaut, sent up to distant space to collect samples from a dust cloud that is slowly disappearing. But his terrestrial exploration only tethers Jakub more and more to the life he left behind, and ultimately this is a story about his isolation and loneliness, in space and on Earth. His family history, straddling the Velvet Revolution, haunts him, and his present world revolves around the love of his life and wife, Lenka. But the tolls of solitary space travel start to cause Jakub to unravel, and then his space mission goes horribly wrong.

Interspersed with flashbacks to his childhood and university days - when he met Lenka - <i>The Spaceman of Bohemia</i> explores themes of forgiveness, sanity, morality and love. At times lightly presented and at times quite dense, I flip-flopped between frantic page-turning as the story completely gripped me, and the need to take a short break from the weightier passages. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the book - the story and Jakub felt real and human, and it was easy to be drawn into his turmoil, even when things got dark.

Wow, this really is an extraordinary book. If you enjoyed reading The Martian, then this will blow your space boots off! Life affirming, amazing, what it's like to be human, thought provoking.

Not as technical as The Martian, it is a surprisingly easy read for a book which is so philosophical and steeped in history and politics. Don't let that all put you off - seriously, I can't be doing with books which are too serious usually, but this is awesome.

It's a magical story of one man, sent into space, with no one but his own mind for company. Until Hanus comes along, that is. Hanus challenges Jakub to reconsider his own existence, and to come to terms with the truth about his father's political past. It's thought-provoking, and shows what it means to be human. I found it life affirming.

It's also a very descriptive book, and the author takes us around the darker side of the city of Prague (yes I know it's supposed to be in space, but that's just part of the story!).

I found this book to be an absolute gem, and I am so pleased to have read it. I've read some cracking books this year, but this has got to be one of the best.

I really enjoyed the beginning of this book. I thought it was well written, had good character development and an interesting structure. This all started to go wrong about half way through. Things started to get a surreal and unbelievable and I just completely lost my ability to care about the main character or what happened to him. The structure stopped making sense as the chapter flipped between present day events and past events that had no real relevance to the present day plot. It just felt a bit clunky and irrelevant. I'm so disappointed as I thought this was a great start.

I finished this novel and it was interesting but I also wonder what I missed about it. I mean, it was about the nature of being and what it means to be human but I felt like I maybe missed what the long journey of the book itself was meant to lead to. This is a low rating primarily because I guess it was the wrong book for me.

This didn't live up to expectations which that it was a story of space travel , instead it was a monologue about one man. Not for me.

My excitement to read this book stemmed from a) it was set in space, b) both the author and the protagonist were Czech and I had never read from this perspective before, and c) have you ever seen a more intriguing cover?

Jakub Procházka, the first Czech in space, is sent on a solo mission to collect dust from the mysterious Chopra cloud. This long, lonely mission gives him the space (pun intended) to contemplate his life back on Earth. His only source of human interaction are his daily video chats with his wife, Lenka. These conversations are a lifeline for the stranded Jakub, but become a source of great anxiety for Lenka. The silence grows, until it overtakes their speaking time. And then, one day, Lenka, does not show for their allotted communication time. What is an astronaut, stranded in space and with the eyes of the world following his every movement, to do with the fact that his wife is leaving him? Devastated by her disappearance and his growing loneliness, Jakub sinks into a deep depression. That's when a Nutella-loving spider-like alien species appears...

...And this is where my affinity with the novel fled!

What, was initially, a startling stark and intriguing philosophical and political novel became something I struggled to fathom. Was this creature a figment of a fractured psyche? Was it the discovery of a real species? Who knows. Certainly not me, who read the book.

I often found myself lost within the narrative, from this point, and struggled with even the inner-monologues I was so initially enamoured with. This became far too complex and muddled for me to discern any structured plot line and my interest in this waned considerably with what, I felt, were unnecessary intrusions into something that could have been profound.

Review copy courtesy of Sceptre via NetGalley - many thanks for the opportunity.

An unusual story, packing in so many ideas and themes that I don't think I can do them all justice, I enjoyed it very much. To focus on the most interesting aspects for me, Jakub’s lone journey into space serves to give him the time to ponder the history of the Czech Republic and his own and his family’s place in it. Jakub’s father had been an official of the Communist state, responsible for rooting out and punishing dissidents, until he and Jakub’s mother are killed in a holiday accident. By 1989 and the fall of Communism, Jakub is living with his grandparents, peasants of the old tradition, scratching a living on the land, but he and they are tainted by association with a man now regarded as a monster of an evil regime. Did his circumstances make him a monster or would he have been one whenever and wherever he had lived? Jakub carries the burden of guilt into his adult life, anxious to prove himself a different, nobler man, and I was keen to see whether his adventures resolved this dilemma for him. When faced with crisis, will he behave better than his father? Will he be able to understand and forgive those he feels have wronged him? A wry, poignant take on the questions - who am I, where do I come from and why am I here? Highly recommended.

I've been reading a lot of sci-fi recently, especially that written by writers who are neither American or Western European. I have found their slightly different take on the genre refreshing. In the west, the idea of travelling to distant worlds tends to tie in with the expanse of empire and world domination. Unsurprisingly, sci-fi from the east takes a slightly different viewpoint. of course, I could be forcing my own world view onto what I read, but I digress.

Jakub Prochazka is the first Czech astronaut and will be the first to encounter a band of purple dust hovering in space and behaving in ways the scientists on earth can't explain. His eight month mission is to go and bring some samples back to earth for analysis. But his mission, as expected, does not go to plan.

As his mission progresses we see in flashback the story of his early childhood, his father's collusion with the communist regime and eventual downfall, his life with his grandparents and the brief yet important relationship with his wife, Lenka.

It is her decision to leave him while he's on his mission that seems to trigger his breakdown and we are left to decide whether Hanus, the spider-like alien who shares his ship, is real or a figment of his deteriorating mind.

To say too much more would be to spoil the book. Kalfar has created an interesting everyman, perhaps his father's son, who seeks glory and meaning at the expense of those he cares for most. The book is almost contemporary which lends a layer of realism to the story. As other reviewers have said, this is literary science fiction and there is one passage I have highlighted on my copy which I will go back to and read time after time. I may have cried.

Is this an original tale? No, not really, but how many of those are there? I found myself reminded of other books and other films as I read on, but this is by no means a rip off of any other tale. Spaceman of Bohemia is a very enjoyable read and it has stayed with me since I finished it a couple of days ago. I expect that like Hanus, it may haunt me for a while yet. Excellent.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Out of all of the debut novels which have been published recently, ‘Spaceman of Bohemia’ by Jaroslav Kalfar has one of the most intriguing and original premises. Set in 2018, it tells the story of Jakub Procházka, a Czech astrophysicist turned astronaut on a solo mission to investigate a dust cloud between Earth and Venus and collect samples for analysis. However, his marriage to Lenka is under further strain as she is left behind on Earth and Jakub has plenty of time on his own to reflect on his family’s past. The appearance of a giant Nutella-loving alien spider called Hanuš who may or may not be a figment of Jakub’s imagination only complicates things further.


‘Spaceman of Bohemia’ contains a unique blend of space travel and recent Czech history, with a particular focus on the Velvet Revolution and the consequences these events have had for Jakub’s family. Most significantly, Jakub’s father had a violent past as a Communist sympathiser who tortured dissidents and after the end of the Cold War, the rest of the family suffered because of his actions. However, there is also plenty of room for humour too. Indeed, the very idea of the Czech Republic sending one of its citizens into space in the near future in order to become a leading player on the world stage is satirical in itself.

The unlikely combination of topics and genres sounds like it shouldn’t work but it actually does, mostly because Kalfar doesn’t overdo any single aspect. Although the novel is much more offbeat in scope and tone compared to most books I read, none of the different elements seemed forced or included just for the sake of it. The confined setting of Jakub’s space probe is outlined in detail but the language used isn’t overly technical. Instead, the story remains focused on past events on Earth and explores big existential questions with light touches of humour. It is about how Jakub, the ultimate underdog, must find a way to accept his public persona as a national hero whilst addressing the issues in his personal life both in the present and the past.

‘Spaceman of Bohemia’ will naturally appeal to those who are fascinated by space travel with a twist and have an appreciation for both realism and the absurd. Many thanks to Sceptre for sending me a review copy via NetGalley.

I’d describe this as a cross between Everything Is Illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer) and The Book of Strange New Things (Michel Faber). It’s the story of Jakub Procházka, a Czech astronaut who leaves his wife behind to undertake a noble research mission but soon realises he can never escape his family history or the hazards of his own mind.

In April 2018, Jakub sets out in the JanHus1 space shuttle, launched to investigate cosmic dust storm “Chopra.” Although back in Prague Jakub is seen as a national hero, life in space soon loses its novelty for him; he’s no longer the “dwarf climbing a beanstalk to arm-wrestle the colossus” but rather “a cellular structure of banal needs for oxygen, for water, for the release of waste.” And then his wife, Lenka, stops showing up for their weekly video chats, so he agrees to have her followed. Maybe after their long infertility struggle she’s finally pregnant?

Amid the drudgery of daily life onboard the shuttle, Jakub makes a friend: a giant, alien spider he names Hanuš. Jakub has the sense that Hanuš is sifting through his memories, drawing out the central tragedies that form his motivation for going to space. There’s his parents’ death in a cable car accident when he was 10, the shame and persecution that resulted from his father being a Party loyalist and member of the Secret Police prior to the Velvet Revolution, and the later loss of his beloved grandfather, whose ashes Jakub carries with him in a cigar box.

This debut novel is a terrific blend of the past and the futuristic, Earth and space. It moves easily between Jakub’s childhood memories, a few highlights of Czech history, including the martyrdom of Jan Hus, and philosophical conversations with Hanuš. As they hurtle towards Chopra (which, Hanuš tells Jakub, contains remnants of the Big Bang), it’s hard to know whether this Nutella-loving spider is real or a hallucination created by an ill mind. In either case, it’s a link to the Czech literary tradition by way of Franz Kafka.

There is much to enjoy here: Jakub’s sometimes baroque narrative voice (“What good am I, a thin purse of brittle bones and spoiling meat?”), which is all the more impressive because Jaroslav Kalfar is in his late twenties and has only spoken English for about 13 years; the mixture of countryside rituals and the bustle of Prague; and the uncertainty about whether Jakub has a viable future, with or without Lenka. I felt the novel went downhill in Part Two and it doesn’t quite pull everything together before its end. However, this is still one of the best debuts I’ve encountered in recent years, and I’ll be eager to see what Kalfar will come up with next.

This is an incredibly accomplished science fiction novel that deals with the life of Jakub, a Czech astronaut sent to investigate the nature of a dust cloud circling Venus. The author cleverly intersperses chapters set in Jakub's past with his present day situation alone aboard a spaceship. What his book achieves is a depth of characterisation unusual for the genre - indeed, it could be argued that this is a character study novel that just happens to be set in space. The prose is lyrical and emotive and the pacing is languid, allowing the reader plenty of time to get under the skin of our protagonist and fully appreciate the impact his past has had upon his present. While it won't be to everyone's taste, I really enjoyed this book and would urge those who appreciate both good sci-fi and good literature, to give it a chance.

Jaroslav Kalfar’s debut novel “Spaceman of Bohemia” has been compared to the extremely popular novel “The Martian” but Kalfar’s novel is far superior. I understand the comparison: both novels are about lone men in space whose solitary “Robinson Crusoe” style adventures find them stranded on their journeys of exploration. While it's enjoyable for some of the plot and scientific detail I thought “The Martian” mostly came across as repetitive and it's suffused with a particularly foul stench of macho bravado. By contrast, “Spaceman of Bohemia” is thoughtful, continuously compelling and says something intelligent about the progress of civilization.

The hero is Jakub Procházka, an astrophysicist with a speciality in cosmic dust which makes him the perfect candidate for the Czech Republic’s first mission into outer space. A comet from another galaxy has streamed through our own solar system leaving a curious cloud between Venus and Earth which has stained our night time sky purple. An opportunistic Czech minister sees a chance for his nation to enter the space race and collect samples of this strange material by sending Jakub on his solitary mission on a second-hand space shuttle. The results are bizarrely thrilling, unexpected and turn into a personal journey which prompts Jakub to survey his position in his own nation’s tumultuous history.

Jakub's journey turns him into a national hero which is particularly significant because of his family's tumultuous history. His father was a Soviet Union stooge when the country was under Communist rule. He engaged in such nefarious activities such as ratting out on neighbours and torturing anti-government prisoners. When the communist regime collapsed in 1989 Jakub's father lost his status and power. Even peripheral members of the family such as Jakub and his grandparents were vilified and discriminated against because of his father's actions. In a particularly harrowing scene they are forced to leave their house: “We leave books that have escaped Austro-Hungarian burnings, German burnings, Stalinist burnings, books that have kept the language alive while regimes attempted to starve it out. We can bring only so much.” This gives a powerful sense of the struggles of common people who've lived in this country which has been bandied back and forth in the fight for political power. The sad result is a gradual deterioration of culture and traditions.

The hope is that Jakub's mission will radically transform the Czech Republic into a leading nations of the world – a dream that quickly sours. Over the course of his dramatic expedition it becomes clear that this journey is much more soul-searching than Jakub first thought. The novel meaningfully considers personal ambition versus personal wellbeing and the private life versus the public life. It's observed how “In one book, your father is a hero. In another book, he is a monster. The men who don’t have books written about them have it easier.” Rather than remaining anonymous, Jakub embarks on making himself into the pride of the nation to eclipse his father's shame, but he loses his beloved wife Lenka in the process. Amidst the dramatic action of his space journey he considers his life with her and what he's lost by letting the weight of his family and his nation's history overwhelm him.

Kalfar is particularly good at enhancing his story with a lot of grit and humour while steering the plot into unexpected avenues. Things get bizarre; there is a lighthearted tension between Jakub's physical and psychological reality. But the story meaningfully shows his gradual growth as an individual emotionally reckoning with the past. Along his journey the book captures all the majesty and wonder of the solar system in a way which manages to be both probingly philosophical and highly playful. It considers the elements of chance, time and how “The slightest gesture makes up our history.” “Spaceman of Bohemia” is a vibrantly pleasurable read that provokes lingering questions about identity and destiny – as well as giving you a craving for jar of Nutella.

I finished Spaceman of Bohemia a few days ago and I'm still struggling to find the right words to describe this extraordinary book. It's science fiction but it's also historical fiction, literary fiction and more simply, a story of a young man trying to come to terms with his past.
The young man in question is Jakub Procházka and the near future of spring 2018 he becomes the Czech Republic's first astronaut when his space shuttle, the JanHusl1 is launched from a state owned potato field. His mission is to capture particles from the mysterious Chopra cloud that has formed between the Earth and Venus, bathing 'Earth’s nights in purple zodiacal light, altering the sky we had known since the birth of man.' after a previously undiscovered comet entered the Milky Way. On the long solo mission Jakub has little else to do but think about his life, his relationship with his father, his grandparents and his wife, Lenka. It soon becomes clear that his relationship with his wife is under strain and the distance between them is more than just the miles. However, it transpires that Jakub isn't as isolated as he thought - he's sharing the JanHusl1 with a giant arachnid alien with thirty-four eyes and rather disturbingly, red human lips and the yellow teeth of a smoker. The spider-alien calls Jakub, 'Skinny human' and becomes the conduit to our finding out more about Jakub's life. This for me is actually the crux of the novel, while I enjoyed the science fiction it's the story behind it, the reasons for Jakub leaving Earth on a potentially fatal mission that makes the book so enjoyable. Kalfař has managed to sublimely blend the often absurd with a riveting social history. As the Velvet Revolution brings about the end of Communism, the teenage Jakub is forced to confront uncomfortable truths about his father's role in the regime. His simple rural life with his grandparents is evocatively told and a striking juxtaposition with his life in deep space. We gradually learn of the events that eventually lead him from a life where slaughtering the pig is a village highlight to conversing with a Nutella loving giant spider aboard the JanHusl1. He's also forced to examine his relationship with his wife and learns that his memories may not tell the whole story. Ultimately the Spaceman of Bohemia is about the universal truths; love, forgiveness, betrayal, acceptance and understanding. It may be a book set in the future but by also looking back at the past we are reminded of humanity's perpetual ability to persist despite our repeated failings. I suspect some people may be put off by the strangeness of the plot. I can only urge you to put your misgivings aside. This is a book that manages to be both playful and profound, it exposes both the brutal Communist regime and the often ridiculous commodification of daily life, it is satire and it is sentimental. Jaroslav Kalfař's debut is unforgettable; weird, funny, sad, touching and a melting pot of themes that combine to create a truly unique work of fiction.
Many thanks to the author and publishers for my copy received through Netgalley in return for this review.

No review - didn't finish. Just not for me. Sorry!

[book:Spaceman of Bohemia|33829933] is a plural book. A literary sci-fi historical fiction philosophical novel that is emotional, intellectual, comforting and challenging. Simultaneously.

A truly impressive debut novel. I will definitely read [author:Jaroslav Kalfar|6942198] future works.

(Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy!)

This is a rather unusual, but excellent scifi story that has you gripped from the first pages. It deals with so many big themes: national identity; changing societal norms; contracts between individuals and between an individual and the state; inherited guilt; love and commitment; individual’s reactions to First Contact with an alien species; loneliness; madness; man’s humanity and inhumanity; what makes a life worth living; and the lengths that one will go to in order to live or to remain free.
The hero of the book, like the author, is Czech, and the love for their country, comes through loud and clear. It is not strident nationalism, rather a quiet pride in the beauty of their cities (Praha, Plzeň, Karlovy Vary), the culture and literature, the resilience during the difficult years of occupation (Austro-Hungarian, German, Soviet) and the hope born of the Velvet Revolution, their past achievements and the dreams of achievements still to come. The book follows the physical and spiritual journey of Jakub Procházka, the Bohemian spaceman of the title, as he travels physically alone towards Venus, but with the hopes and dreams of his countrymen: “With JanHus1 lie our hopes of new sovereignty and prosperity, for we are now among the explorers of the universe. We look away from our past, in which we were claimed by others, in which our language was nearly eradicated, in which Europe covered its eyes and ears as its very heart was stolen and brutalized. It is not only our science and technology traveling through this vacuum; it is our humanity, our beauty, in form of Jakub Procházka, the first spaceman of Bohemia, who will carry the soul of the republic to the stars. Today, we finally and absolutely claim ourselves as our own.”; “A nation of kings and discoverers, yet the child across the ocean still confuses us with Chechnya, or reduces us to our great affinity for beer and pornography”.
During his flight to Venus, Jakob considers his life, his marriage and his country through a series of flashbacks. His childhood was blighted by the reputation of his father as a torturer of the communist government. First, he was indulged out of fear, then after the communist downfall, he was bullied for the sins of his dead father (“When my father the hero was lost, my father the nation’s villain came to light”. The space flight gives him a chance at restitution by dedicating his life to the new, free country. As the distance from earth increases, so does the emotional separation from his wife: “Conducting an Earth/Space marriage through these weekly video feeds felt like watching an infection claim healthy flesh inch by inch while making plans for next summer”. Then, when Lena disappears, Jakob is devastated. He continues to perform his tasks: “Filter testing, sensor cleaning, a more rigid exercise program to prepare me for possible emergency protocols, video chat events to satisfy the sense of ownership and pride of the taxpayers … dutifully but without much excitement”, though never forgets to mention a sponsor, even when talking to himself: “Bomba!, a revolution in home cleaning and mission sponsor”.
Then, everything changes when Hanuš appears – the diminutive, spider-like alien with a passion for Nutella – and (after a period of adjustment) Jakub has a friend, and a reason for living: “for a moment just before my loss of consciousness, I was glad. Glad that the creature was with me, real or not, searching the kitchen for eggs”. Whether Hanuš is a hallucination or there in fact is really immaterial, he is a wonderful character, that you really want to be real. They both learn about each other’s world, and what is important to them: “If the body mattered to Hanuš, it mattered to me, and I would worship it as he had”, and all is going very well – until they reach the mission goal – the space cloud Chopra. But the book is only halfway through! What on earth (or more particularly in space) can possibly happen now?
There is a fantastic twist, that you cannot see coming, and the story just keeps getting better and better, and the grand themes play out to an even greater degree.
At the end is acceptance and hope for the future: “I wished that by night time the crowd would grow into the thousands, like in the days of the Velvet Revolution, when our nation was so alive that its outcry thundered across the globe, breaking free of the greed and exploitation of men who’d lost themselves. Every single one of these bodies who’d decided to cast aside the ceaseless distractions, who’d decided to put on shoes and take a sign and march around the cobblestones of the nation instead of watching a bit of television was a single act of revolution, a single particle within the explosion of the Big Bang. I felt confident in leaving the fate of this world in their hands”.
This book is scifi and philosophy at its finest. The writing and imagery is superb. I hope there will be more from tis talented writer – but please, no sequel – this book is perfection as it stands.

I loved this book, it made a big impression on me and I still think about the characters at times. It reminded me a bit of the film "Mars" but with an eastern Europe flavour to it.
It was beautifully written, a flowing style which was a delight to read.
The ending in my opinion is also very satisfying.

http://www.themodernnovel.org/europe/europe/czech-republic/jaroslav-kalfar/spacemen-of-bohemia/
http://www.themodernnovelblog.com/2017/01/21/jaroslav-kalfar-spacemen-of-bohemia/