Stylish and gritty, stories of class mobility and clash, from the author of International Booker finalist Wretchedness

The stories in Purity take the reader through cities and suburbs, apartments and streets, to find characters struggling to survive in modern society: a man has an outburst on a bus; a fugitive finds insight in a colour wheel; a social realist kills his friend with a hammer; a thief finds himself in books. And cleaners reluctantly go on cleaning. With gravity and humour, against the backdrop of a violent civilization, people are depicted as fallen, or waiting to fall, rendered by Tichý with the fury, compassion and emotional complexity of Kendrick Lamar.