Hero Tojosoa arrives in Prague for the bachelorette weekend of Sofie, an estranged friend whose invitation she had expected—and perhaps intended—to refuse.

The reappearance of another woman from their shared past unsettles the group further, as competing versions of old events begin to collide. Meanwhile, Hero becomes absorbed by Paradoxical Undressing, a mysterious novel whose contents appear to change between readings.

Prague becomes an active, unreliable intelligence: a city of thresholds, doubles, mistranslations and stories that reorganise themselves around whoever is telling them. The novel moves by digression and nested narrative rather than ordinary plot, continually questioning whether shared history is ever truly shared—or merely several private fictions temporarily using the same names. 

This is fiction as architectural mischief: comic, cerebral, deliberately disorienting, and unusually alert to the social power of interpretation. Beneath its games with form sits a sharper study of friendship, exclusion and the danger of treating one’s account of another person as settled fact. Best for readers who like novels that behave less like roads than cities: full of false turns, disputed borders and doors that were not there yesterday.

Faber, 2024. First UK edition, first printing. Hardback. Near fine, with very light handling and minor edge wear.