“A terse and unflinchingly honest novel about war and man’s inhumanity to men and women . . . brutal, bestial and highly disturbing.”—William Boyd
In an unnamed country, a group of fugitives flees their native village after an attack by the army. Their houses bombed and ransacked, their husbands, children, and parents killed, they are seeking sanctuary. Meanwhile, a sniper hides, picking off innocents in a besieged city. His apocalyptic, hallucinatory voice provides the novel with its main themes, the insanity of war and the terrifying exhilaration it excites in its perpetrators.
Novelist and playwright Pavel Hak was born in Czechoslovakia in 1962. Exiled in France in 1986, he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne University. Sniper is his first book to be published in English. He lives in Paris.
Novelist and playwright Pavel Hak was born in Czechoslovakia in 1962. Exiled in France in 1986, he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. Afterwards he began writing in French. Sniper, his second novel, is his first book to be published in English. He has also recently written a play 'Lutte a Mort' (2004). In his own words, Pavel Hak "investigates contemporary violence, mechanisms of dominations and the moral and physical torture inflicted on individuals."