Velký sešit

The gritty story of two young twin boys who form their morals in a world of twisted wartime and post-war values.
Two boys of extraordinary rational intelligence, bound together, moreover, by the almost mystical bond of identical twins, torn from the safety of home, they understand immediately that the only self-defense against the cynicism and brutality of the world is - to learn it, to endure it, and to outwit it.

The large booklet bears comparison with Kosinski's famous book, The Painted Bird. It is an artistic testimony to a monstrosity even incomparably worse: with a stylistic position working with the bare testimony of a child's diary entry, the most terrible hero of our time is created here: the child as apprentice and accomplice to crime. The Big Book becomes a book about the killing and destruction of the angelhood of an innocent age and the destruction of primordial human purity. Even with all the cruelty of the school of inhumanity demonstrated, it is still at the same time a picture of hope in the regenerative power of the two children so early in their youth.

The Big Book became the basis for the film of the same name, which won the top prize at the 48th Academy Awards. IFF in Karlovy Vary in 2013.

Czech edition