Amidst the turmoil of the 20th century, an ambitious historical saga about a region battered by history: Sudetenland.

Sudetenland has always been a troubled region, coveted by both the Germans and the Czechs. In 1938, Hitler gained the upper-hand when he annexed Sudetenland and worsened the fates of the Jewish population in the fictional city of Jedlov.

And so begins Timothée Demeillers epic about this region and its inhabitants from WWII to today. After the horrors of the Nazis, the Russians came to liberate the people of Sudetenland allowing them to take revenge against their German neighbors. But over time the Russian liberators became the occupants as the Iron Curtain rose and then life radically changed when the Curtain fell…

Amongst the multiple protagonists whose stories we follow over the decades, there is Sieglinde, a German girl in love with a Czech boy who finds herself confronted with the hatred and contempt of the victors, and also Ivetka, married at fourteen, who manages to educate and emancipate herself, becoming the first Roma woman to pursue higher education…

A sweeping saga spanning nearly seventy years, The Tumult and the Oblivion is inspired by the author’s family history.

Timothée Demeillers was born in 1984. His first novel, Prague, Faubourgs Est, was published by Asphalte in 2014. This was followed by Jusqu’à la Bête in 2017 (winner of the Young Novelist Award, Calibre 47 Award, and the Grignan Second Novel Award), Demain la Brume in 2020 (winner of the Hors Concours Award and the Privat Readers’ Award), and Voyage au Liberland in 2022, a non-fiction account co-written with Grégoire Osoha and published by Marchialy. He currently lives in Nantes.