Stories between grey and glimmer

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Two extraordinary novels are set in the Ore Mountains, in the towns of Tann and St. Joachimsthal/Jáchymov, whose history was characterised by uranium mining and the operation of spas, and whose authors combine the real with fairy-tale and fantastical elements. The life of Ida is at the centre of Tina Pruschmann's novel Bitter Waters (2022). Ida's parents work in the GDR state circus, her mother is a trapeze artist and her father trains elephants. Ida is also in the circus ring. When she starts school, however, she is sent to live with her grandparents in Tann, where Wismut mines uranium. After reunification, when the mine is closed, Ida leaves. Something drives her to the Ukraine. Around the same time, the Englishman Henry Robotham sets off on his journey to Jáchymov in Lenka Elbe's novel Uranova (2020). This is where the last trace of his girlfriend Angela, who travelled to Czechoslovakia in 1968 to search for her Czech ancestors, was lost. Henry Robotham arrives in a place that is eerily deserted, with glamorous spa hotels on one side and the remains of Stalinist penal camps on the other, where prisoners were forced to work themselves to death in uranium mines. Amidst these contrasts, a breathtaking battle between good and evil unfolds.