Case Closed

Centered on an elderly retiree and his intellectual adversary, the shrewd Inspector Lebeda, "Case Closed" is filled with all the expected elements of a thriller--murder, rape, suicide!--but soon reveals itself as a wily and sophisticated parable about the dangers of language itself, in which the author takes aim at human nature with a devastating arsenal of genre-mixing, wordplay, and whimsical, biting satire.

Patrik Ou?ednik was born in Prague, but immigrated to France in 1984 where he still lives. He is the author of eight books, including fiction, essays, and poems. He is also the Czech translator of novels, short stories, and plays from such writers as Francois Rabelais, Alfred Jarry, Raymond Queneau, Samuel Beckett, and Boris Vian. He has received a number of literary awards for his writing, including the Czech Literary Fund Award Alex Zucker is an editor, writer and translator of Czech literature. He has received an English PEN Award for Writing in Translation, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and the ALTA National Translation Award. He currently serves as co-chair of the PEN America Translation Committee.