My Brother the Messiah

It’s 2103 and Earth is baking. Scientists attempt to cool down the planet. With the coming of rain, a messiah is born.

Eli is a technophobe haunted by premonitions of what will come. His strange magnetism draws many to his cause. For his brother Marek, Eli has always been a messiah. After his short and powerful life, Eli's most haunting prediction comes to pass: children stop being born.

Thirty-five years later, only The Followers of Eli bear children. Marek leads his commune under the glare of the entire world, and recounts Eli’s story to his lover, Natalia. When she is snatched from him, Marek suspects both the followers and outside forces are to blame. Lessons from Marek’s past and revelations from his present inspire one final journey in his brother’s footsteps.

My Brother the Messiah explores spirituality in the twilight of human civilization and presents a dark, vivid future of our world.

The Jewish-Czech author Martin Vopěnka is one of the leading voices in world literature, writing  ‘with a deft and compellingly simple control of sentences that is reminiscent of both Kafka and Kundera’ – Choice.

Martin Vopěnka was born in Prague in 1963. The son of the famous mathematician Petr Vopěnka, Martin studied Mathematics and Physics at the Czech Technical University in Prague, but was always intent on being a writer. His first novel, Kameny z hor (Rocks from the Mountains) recorded memories and emotions from a journey across the Romanian Carpathians. The themes explored in his books go beyond the local themes of much Czech literature. He views the contemporary world with caution, and contributes polemic articles to the national daily paper MF Dnes. In 2016 his Nová Planeta (New Planet) won the country’s premier Golden Ribbon Award.

Anna Bryson was born in Birmingham in the UK in 1955. She studied modern history at Oxford University, where she went on to obtain a DPhil in history (1984). Her history book, From Courtesy to Civility, Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England, was published by Oxford University Press in 1998.

She was appointed Lecturer in Intellectual History in the School of European Studies at Sussex University in 1985, where she developed an interest in East European and specifically Czech culture. Following the Velvet Revolution in 1989 she spent a sabbatical in Prague and in 1991 she decided to move there permanently.

From 1991 to 2010 she worked as an advisor and translator in the International Relations Department at Charles University in Prague, and also lectured at the Philosophical Faculty and Faculty of Social Sciences, as well as writing occasional pieces on Czech life and culture in the British press. She also established a reputation as a translator of academic articles and monographs in history, social sciences and the arts. Her more recent book-length academic translations include Miroslav Verner, Temple of the World: Sanctuaries, Cults, and Mysteries of Ancient Egypt (2013)  and Vaclav Houzvicka,  Czechs and Germans 1848-2004: The Sudeten Question and the Transformation of Central Europe (2016).

In the field of fiction, Anna Bryson translated the Czech novelist Martin Vopenka’s novel Ballad of Descent (1995, Northwestern University Press 1995), and has continued to work with him over the years, for example on extracts from his work for the Prague Writers’ Festival and most recently his ecological fairy stories, Tales from the Windy Mountains.

Since 2010 Anna Bryson has worked as an entirely freelance translator, editor and writer. Her work appears both under her maiden name and her married name Anna Bryson Gustova.