A Contribution to the History of Joy

A complex mix of crime fiction, historical narrative, and feminist social commentary that exposes a decades long coverup of atrocities archived in a Prague neighborhood.

The body of a wealthy, middle-aged businessman is discovered hanging in the attic of his Old Town Prague villa. At first, everything points to suicide, but his young Widow denies the possibility. The ensuing investigation leads a Detective to a house on Petřín Hill, where three elderly women live: a yoga instructor, a film director, and a creative writing teacher. As the Detective pores through their vast archive of documents, most of which concern rape and abuse cases dating back to World War II, he begins to suspect the women of taking justice into their own hands. How far are they willing to go in their efforts to right the "raped century"?

Denemarková's fourth novel addresses the sexualized violence that pervades all times and cultures--from Nazi crimes in Poland to mass rape in India and forced prostitution of minors in England--a universal calamity stored in the body's memory, for which the birds are the only reliable witnesses.

Author: Radka Denemarková
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Published: 09/22/2026
Pages: 317
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.40w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781566897662


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 07/17/2026 pg. 1
Foreword 08/27/2026

About the Author
Radka Denemarková is a celebrated Czech novelist, dramatist, TV screenplay writer, translator, and essayist. Denemarková is the only Czech writer who has received the Magnesia Litera Award four times. Her works have been translated into 23 languages. A Contribution to the History of Joy won the Spycher Leuk Literature Award 2019, and is her first book to be published in English. She lives in Prague.

Julia Sherwood is a translator from Slovak, Czech, Polish, Russian and German into English (with Peter Sherwood), as well as into Slovak. She was born and grew up in Bratislava and studied English and Slavic languages and literatures at universities in Cologne, Munich and London, graduating with a Masters degree in 1983. After working for over 20 years in the NGO sector, she became a full-time freelance translator in 2010. She is currently living in London. Julia served as editor-at-large for Slovakia with the online translation journal Asymptote (2013-2023) and is the editor of Seagull Books' Slovak List.

Peter Sherwood is a translator and scholar. He taught at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, from 1972 to 2007. From 2008 until his retirement in 2014 he was László Birinyi, Sr., Distinguished Professor of Hungarian Language and Culture in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Peter's translations from the Hungarian include collections of essays by Béla Hamvas and Antal Szerb, as well as numerous works of Hungarian fiction, most recently Ádám Bodor's The Birds of Verhovina and Krisztina Tóth's Barcode.