Argo: Alexej Sevruk - The culmination of summer

An evening with Alex Sevruk's short story collection The Climax of Summer

Deeply reflective prose with existential and socially critical overtones.

Eleven short stories, eleven moments when time stands still - or breaks. The protagonists of these texts struggle with exhaustion, silence and their own shadows: in a garden, on a jogging trail, in the middle of a Mikulov winter or near a nuclear power plant. The culmination of summer means a peak - but also a transition, a fall, a reconciliation. The collection sensitively combines raw realism with inner lyricism, absurdity with subtle grotesque. Each story here is like a lucid cut through a place, a condition, a relationship - without pathos, but with deep understanding.

Alexej Sevruk (1983) was born in Kiev and has lived in the Czech Republic since he was twelve years old. He studied Ukrainian Studies and General Slavonic Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. He received his doctorate in Slavic literature there. After the success of his debut sensitive novel The European Woman (2023) about identity, roots and the search for a place in Europe, he is now publishing a collection of short stories called The Culmination of Summer. He works as an archivist at the Memorial of National Literature. He lives in Litoměřice. 

The evening will be introduced by Jan M. Heller, literary critic, poet and essayist.

Free entry