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The Arsonist
by
Egon Hostovský
general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author
| Title: | The Arsonist |
| Author: | Egon Hostovský |
| Genre: | Novel |
| Written: | 1935 (Eng. 1996) |
| Length: | 178 pages |
| Original in: | Czech |
| Availability: | The Arsonist - US |
| The Arsonist - UK | |
| The Arsonist - Canada | |
| El incendiario - España | |
| from: Bookshop.org (US) | |
| directly from: Twisted Spoon Press |
- Czech title: Žhář
- Translated by Christopher Morris
- With an Afterword by Radojka Miljević
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Our Assessment:
B+ : nicely done and written
See our review for fuller assessment.
| Source | Rating | Date | Reviewer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Books Abroad | . | Fall/1937 | J.S.Roucek |
From the Reviews:
- "It is absorbing reading, of the sort which we expect from Egon Hostovský." - J.S.Roucek, Books Abroad
Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.
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The complete review's Review:
The Arsonist opens summing up what to expect in the novel:
The small mountain town that an unknown arsonist menaced and terrified for two months is called Zbečnov.The town has some 1500 inhabitants, and is right on the German (Prussian) border, but there's nothing notable about it -- "It's a godforsaken place, rightfully overlooked". While there are then several fires in the town, as the narrator (who occasionally comes to the fore in his account, while mostly staying in the background) explains: "The occurrences I am going to speak of have their own central setting. It is Josef Simon's inn, the Silver Pigeon". The Silver Pigeon is both regular meeting- and gathering-place for many of the townsfolk as well as the Simon-family's household, and it is the Simon family that much of the plot revolves around.
Simon has a much younger wife who, after years of marriage, is resigned to her lot, though she has never made a friend in all her years in Zbečnov, and always locks the doors in their house. They have two children: seventeen-year-old Eliška, who had spent the past three years basically shut away in a convent -- the same one her mother had gotten her schooling in -- and fifteen-year-old Kamil, who has greater ambitions than following in his father's footsteps. The household is then also unsettled by some outsiders -- specifically, Eliška's friend from the convent, Dora, whom Eliška invites to stay with them for a while (who Kamil of course falls for), and a poet, who Eliška is tempted by.
Secrets hover over much of the story -- not just the identity of the arsonist, but also questions around Dora (her departure from the convent, and then abrupt departure from Zbečnov) and Simon's wife (he reads her old letters, but never addresses what is revealed in them), for example. Characters try to keep their secrets, such as Eliška about her passion for the poet -- and her plans to run away with him --, or Simon's wife keeping some of what she knows about Dora from Eliška. Simon's wife's habit of locking up rooms is, of course, also symbolic .....
It's almost a third of the way into the novel before: "the arsonist appeared on the scene for the first time" -- though it is, of course, not the arsonist that appears but rather the deed the arsonist is responsible for. More fires follow, and so:
Zbečnov was saddled with a misfortune that was so concrete, manifest, and yet mysterious, that it was impossible to classify it in any known hierarchy of catastrophes.It mirrors the unsettled state of the Simon-household, with its own misfortunes.
The nearby German border and a few things that could be taken for clues lead some to believe the firebug must be a German -- as certainly the (real) German threat hangs uneasily over the novel, first published in 1935 Czechoslovakia, but Hostovský's study in fear and (re)action is tightly localized, with the Silver Pigeon the heart of almost all the matters; outsiders upset parts of the local order, but the derangement lies within. As the narrator -- stepping somewhat forward once again, and addressing the reader directly -- sums up:
I already told you at the beginning of our story: at that time, Misery was stalking the world on crutches, money was going up in smoke, banks and factories were collapsing -- the more corn and cloth there was in those days, the less bread and fewer shirts there were for the poor. But this worldwide evil found its common denominator in a six-letter, two syllable formula, analyzed, interpreted, justified, counted and weighed. Whereas backward Zbečnov had yet to find a similar magic formula for its arsonist. Zbečnov was afraid of the unknown. And it was a matter of capturing the unknown in the snares set by the gendarmes, or at least set my formulae. Unfortunately, the whole case was too illogical, unreal, improbable.The Arsonist is something of a mystery, and does build to a resolution of the question of who set the fires (and who left the warning-notes ...) -- but it's not quite of the textbook mystery-book sort. With a light comic touch as well, Hostovský cuts to the quick of this small-town and small family life with characters and a locale not entirely cut off from the world at large but touched by it only by isolated pricks and prods -- and shrinking back from it. Unsurprisingly, Zbečnov -- and the Simon family -- find the easiest thing to do is largely withdraw into themselves and their little world: as Simon tells his family:
(Y)ou may get angry with me at times because I don't want to know anything about the world and about what's going on all around us. But, hand on my heart, hasn't it been good to us ?Willful blindness is the preferable solution -- even as, as Hostovský warns, the world all around is smoldering dangerously.
It's nicely done, with Hostovský presenting his tale at just the right distance, knowingly without getting too closely caught up in his characters (and ready to leave them behind at the end: "But let's leave Zbečnov now ! [...] We are leaving, and the blue wind sees us off").
The Arsonist is unsettling on multiple levels, and Hostovský is particularly good at the layering -- including that of the various passions and disappointments of the two Simon teens. He weaves a lot into the relatively short novel, and it holds up very well.
- M.A.Orthofer, 10 April 2025
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The Arsonist:
- Twisted Spoon Press publicity page
- Pluh - Literary Agency information page
- Xordica publicity page
- fiordo publicity page
- Egon Hostovský at Pluh - Literary Agency
- See Index of Eastern European literature
- See Index of Books Written Between 1900 and 1945
- Other books from Twisted Spoon Press under review
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Czech author Egon Hostovský lived 1908 tp 1973.
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© 2025 the complete review
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