Description

With “A thousand windows” Nassir Djafari tells the moving story of love in the shadow of political upheaval. In April 1972, the Czech journalist Pavel Horak dared to escape from Prague and crossed the border into the West - in the hope that his wife Jana would soon be able to join him. But when the smuggler returns, he doesn't bring Jana with him, but a strange woman.

While Pavel desperately searches for answers in exile and settles into a new life between hope and uncertainty, the story behind Jana's disappearance gradually unfolds. Told in two perspectives, the novel takes us back to the time of the Prague Spring and its violent end - and shows how political decisions have a deep impact on personal fates.

Djafari paints a haunting picture of flight, exile and the torn between leaving and staying. “A thousand windows” is a novel about love, loss and the courage to stand up for self-determination.

press reviews

"A Thousand Windows" is as much a multi-layered story about migration and power structures as it is a fast-paced suspense novel, the potential film adaptation of which you always have in mind when you read it. And you can't help but feel how similar the methods of repressive systems then and now are and you have to wonder how little has changed at the core when it comes to combating the mechanisms behind them, combating racism and anti-Semitism and all the other evils that still threaten democracies from within today.

– Gerrit Wustmann (@gerrit.wustmann)

"A Thousand Windows” is an unusual novel that keeps the reader in suspense and makes them curious about Djafari’s other works.

– Bruno Rieb (The new country messenger)