A BRIEF HISTORY OF LIVING FOREVER

Kalfař, who moved to the United States from the Czech Republic when he was 15, incorporates both countries in this dystopian story about a Czech woman whose search for her long-lost daughter in 2029 America quickly becomes a techno-mystery about life beyond physical death.

Learning she has a fatal disease, Adéla Slavíková procures a 10-day visa to America to find Tereza, the daughter she gave up for adoption as an infant. Unfortunately, America—now ruled by former Republicans who have formed the Reclamation Party under an unnamed former Florida governor’s leadership—now exemplifies a world that, having been buffeted by natural and political disasters, has deteriorated into “global fascism.” Tereza works for VITA, a bioengineering corporation run by twin masterminds (a fictional double whammy of Elon Musk). Adéla does locate Tereza, and they spend one joyous day together. But that night Adéla dies in her hotel room, at least physically. Unbodied, she continues to narrate her attempt to adjust to what she assumes is death. She lacks sensations, like smell, but she can mentally travel at will. So her consciousness veers between observing her current situation and reliving the late 1980s, when she came to the U.S. for the first time with high hopes for a better life. When her ambitions and love life faltered, she returned to Czechoslovakia pregnant—and now she is drawn yet resistant to nostalgia over the romantic but ultimately disappointing American interlude. Meanwhile, she observes as her Czech son, Roman, who's struggling with his own demons, joins forces with Tereza to search for their mother’s now-missing body. Their dangerous trek into a world where greed and tribal loyalty trump ethics carries them to VITA’s secret facilities in climate-ravaged Florida, where things get too weird to explain. Kalfař brings his characters to life with almost formal eloquence. Although he tends to overstate and repeat his moral condemnations, he makes the potential power of technology and artificial intelligence a frightening prospect.

Both scary science fiction and a bleak nightmare about the end of democracy.