Miloš Urban

Discharged from the Police after a botched job, K. is unexpectedly asked to rejoin the force and given a very specific assignment – that of accompanying and protecting Matthias Gmünd, an eccentric aristocrat who intends to restore the Gothic churches of Prague to their original glory. At first, K is in his element – after all, he is himself a failed historian obsessed with the Middle Ages and suspicious of the contemporary world. But his visits to Prague’s historic churches are show more increasingly accompanied by terrifying fits in which K has mysterious visions of the past. More worryingly, a serial killer is on the loose, seemingly targeting anybody who dares defy the sacred sites of the town.

Miloš Urban’s atmospheric 1999 Gothic novel The Seven Churches was a bestseller in Spain and the Czech Republic and has been translated into twelve languages. Hats off, then, to Peter Owen Publishers for securing the publication of Robert Russell’s English translation. Indeed, I am rather surprised that it has not enjoyed the runaway success obtained by other, less-deserving novels.

Urban has been compared to Umberto Eco but, frankly, that is the type of lazy analogy which nowadays tends to be applied to any literary thriller associated with the Middle Ages. The novel is reminiscent of Eco in its erudition and in its author’s evident love for literature and cultural history. However, the novel has supernatural undercurrents which are not particularly typical of the Italian author. The Seven Churches reminds me rather of Peter Ackroyd’s [b:Hawksmoor|67729|Hawksmoor|Peter Ackroyd|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1411397981s/67729.jpg|65684]. There is a resemblance in the subject-matter (a serial killer obsessed with historical churches) and a similar concern with psycho-geography – the quasi-mystical idea that buildings can carry “memories” of ages past. In the novel we roam through a Prague in which the Middle Ages unexpectedly reassert themselves, in which chasms open up in the road swallowing cars into medieval crypts; in which unicorns appear on dissecting tables and buxom beauties wear chastity belts; in which centuries-old secret societies live on, hidden from the hustle and bustle of the modern world.

At one point, K. is drawn into a literary discussion about Gothic novels – he tends to prefer supernatural Gothic to the rational strand of the genre in which all puzzling occurrences are tidily explained at the end. In Urban’s book, there seems to be a struggle between the two types of Gothic. Some mysteries are solved – other questions remain tantalisingly unanswered. In fact, the novel just gets weirder with each chapter. The ambiguous ending is somewhat unsatisfying from a narrative point of view. However, one cannot help feeling that it fits this haunting, uncanny novel like a glove. show less

Discharged from the Police after a botched job, K. is unexpectedly asked to rejoin the force and given a very specific assignment – that of accompanying and protecting Matthias Gmünd, an eccentric aristocrat who intends to restore the Gothic churches of Prague to their original glory. At first, K is in his element – after all, he is himself a failed historian obsessed with the Middle Ages and suspicious of the contemporary world. But his visits to Prague’s historic churches are show more increasingly accompanied by terrifying fits in which K has mysterious visions of the past. More worryingly, a serial killer is on the loose, seemingly targeting anybody who dares defy the sacred sites of the town.

Miloš Urban’s atmospheric 1999 Gothic novel The Seven Churches was a bestseller in Spain and the Czech Republic and has been translated into twelve languages. Hats off, then, to Peter Owen Publishers for securing the publication of Robert Russell’s English translation. Indeed, I am rather surprised that it has not enjoyed the runaway success obtained by other, less-deserving novels.

Urban has been compared to Umberto Eco but, frankly, that is the type of lazy analogy which nowadays tends to be applied to any literary thriller associated with the Middle Ages. The novel is reminiscent of Eco in its erudition and in its author’s evident love for literature and cultural history. However, the novel has supernatural undercurrents which are not particularly typical of the Italian author. The Seven Churches reminds me rather of Peter Ackroyd’s [b:Hawksmoor|67729|Hawksmoor|Peter Ackroyd|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1411397981s/67729.jpg|65684]. There is a resemblance in the subject-matter (a serial killer obsessed with historical churches) and a similar concern with psycho-geography – the quasi-mystical idea that buildings can carry “memories” of ages past. In the novel we roam through a Prague in which the Middle Ages unexpectedly reassert themselves, in which chasms open up in the road swallowing cars into medieval crypts; in which unicorns appear on dissecting tables and buxom beauties wear chastity belts; in which centuries-old secret societies live on, hidden from the hustle and bustle of the modern world.

At one point, K. is drawn into a literary discussion about Gothic novels – he tends to prefer supernatural Gothic to the rational strand of the genre in which all puzzling occurrences are tidily explained at the end. In Urban’s book, there seems to be a struggle between the two types of Gothic. Some mysteries are solved – other questions remain tantalisingly unanswered. In fact, the novel just gets weirder with each chapter. The ambiguous ending is somewhat unsatisfying from a narrative point of view. However, one cannot help feeling that it fits this haunting, uncanny novel like a glove. show less

No se ni como reseñar este libro, por supuesto puedo decir que me ha gustado, pero me parece muy poca cosa que decir siendo el libro que es.
Tiene una historia de asesinatos, pero no creo que lo pudiera encuadrar en un thriller o al menos no en uno convencional, lo que sucede es que los asesinatos que ocurren no son, ni de lejos, la parte central de la historia.
Para empezar, es un libro que se centra mucho sobre la historia del estilo arquitectónico de unas iglesias de Praga, basándose en show more siete iglesias de estilo gótico de la edad media y que en la actualidad se encuentran casi en ruinas.
Vamos conociendo de alguna manera la historia arquitectónica de estas iglesias a través de la vida de su protagonista, un policía mucho más allá de mediocre el cual antes de entrar a la policía abandona sus estudios de historia, en fin, es un personaje realmente patético que se ve envuelto en una serie de asesinatos que lo hacen regresar a la policía, pero todo a través de otro personaje por demás peculiar.
La cuestión aquí es que, entre lo gótico, lo extraño, lo extravagante de la historia vamos conociendo esta parte de historia arquitectónica de una de las ciudades, para mi gusto, más hermosas del mundo, sin embargo, no es un libro convencional en ningún sentido, su estilo narrativo es errático, el ritmo de la historia tiene altibajos, la narrativa es pausada, extraña, tanto como la historia misma.
Es un libro peculiar, pero interesante en su extraña manera, me ha costado mucho sacarme el chip de la cabeza de un thriller tradicional para cambiarlo a uno de estilo gótico con un final que no es para nada lo que se puede esperar, aquí no importa si adivinamos o no quien o quienes son los responsables de las muertes, aquí lo que importa es conocer a nuestro protagonista y perdernos en sus extrañas maneras y en lo que le está sucediendo de otra manera será imposible de leer. show less

"Lord Mord" opens with an edited extract from "Bestia Triumphans", an inflammatory pamphlet published in 1896 by Czech writer Vilém Mrštík in which he denounces the "clearance" and rebuilding of the Prague Jewish quarter, known as Josefov. The fictional plot of the novel unfolds against this historical backdrop. Its narrator is Count Arco, a thirty-year-old member of the minor Czech nobility who wastes his time and money on whores, alcohol and drugs and who knows the Jewry well thanks to show more his dubious nightly haunts.

It is difficult to warm to Arco - he is indolent and arrogant and his attitude to women is particularly demeaning. Indeed, this threatens to mar one's enjoyment of the novel, which lacks a strong female character to balance the misogyny of the protagonist. Arco, however, turns into an unlikely hero when he purchases an ancient house and stands up to the authorities when they include it in their demolition plans. In the fraught political atmosphere of the turn of the century, this borders on an act of treason against the Imperial authorities. As if this were not enough, Arco's path crosses that of "Kleinfleisch", a mythological bogeyman who starts to haunt the Jewish quarter, killing prostitutes close to Arco.

"Lord Mord" shares several elements with Urban's earlier and better known novel [b:The Seven Churches|24050504|The Seven Churches|Miloš Urban|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|4540871] - not least the Prague setting, the concept of the individual resisting "modern" developments and the serial killer subplot. This is, therefore, another "Gothic novel of Prague". However, whereas Seven Churches was based in 1990s Prague with mysterious flashbacks/visions of the Middle Ages, "Lord Mord" is squarely set a century before. I don't know about the original Czech version, but the flowing translation by Gerald Turner does not attempt to mimic the flowery language of the period. Rather than through a pastiche of earlier style, the novels of the 19th century are referenced through elements of plot and setting, which replicate common tropes of classic urban Gothic and adventure novels - narrow, foggy streets; drug-fuelled visions; consumptive prostitutes; serial killers sowing terror in the cover of the night; and also some final derring-do worthy of Dumas.

On the whole, I felt that whilst less original and striking than Seven Churches, "Lord Mord" is better crafted and more satisfactory from a purely narrative point of view. No cult novel then, but certainly an assured and entertaining one.

3.5* show less