Book talk: This room is impossible to eat

Tereza and Ivan share secrets. Tereza is now in art school away from the town where she grew up. Ivan is a teacher and artist. Tereza is now eighteen, Ivan is fifty-six. They have known each other for years.

Nicol Hochholczerová’s poetic novella is a brutal and psychologically penetrating account of abuse and its consequences, spanning six years of Tereza’s adolescence and young adulthood. Through an unforgettable meeting of minimalist language and visceral metaphors, Hochholczerová weaves a twisted fairytale of explosive themes—of eating disorder, coercive control, and family dysfunction—to chart Tereza’s painful journey to freedom. Comparable in its power to Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, and My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, Hochholczerová’s debut is an unmissable addition to an international canon of women’s literature turning under the light some of the most controversial and painful issues of our era.

Julia and Peter Sherwood are celebrated translators of Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Slovak and Russian. Bringing several generations of contemporary Slovak writers to an English-speaking audience, their monumental repertoire includes novels and short stories by Balla, Uršul’a Kovalyk, and Peter Krištúfek, as well as Ivana Dobrakovová, winner of the EU prize for literature.

Julia says: “Nicol Hochholczerová's debut This Room Is Impossible to Eat struck me as the most exciting work published in Slovakia in recent years and I felt strongly that it should be read by anglophone readers. Nicol's original approach to an extremely sensitive subject gives this powerful book universal contemporary resonance.”