Fresh Mint With Lemon

During a sultry month on the Mediterranean coast, tension mounts in a triangle of love, power, and desire between a Russian art critic, an American artist, and a provocative activist
Russian art critic Vadim meets a mysterious North American artist of Russian origins, Patricia Pavloff, in Saint Petersburg. Captivated by the painter’s brilliance, the young critic travels to the coastal Catalonian town of Sitges, where Patricia lives, hoping to interview her and write a book about her work. Vadim’s dreams of being admitted to the inner sanctuary of the artist’s studio wax and wane as Patricia’s personality oscillates between two extremes. She’s friendly and playful one moment, cold and distant the next. Patricia shares her house with the voluptuous and provocative Radhika, whose power games foster an unsettling dynamic between the three. Attracted by Radhika’s beauty but repelled by her politics, Vadim doesn’t know which of the two women he desires most. Underlying the sexual and romantic tension are the dramatic events of the Prague Spring of 1968, cut short by the Soviet invasion. The juxtaposition of two narratives provokes fresh perspectives in this multi-layered and sensual exploration of the nature of love, art, guilt, and freedom.
“Fresh Mint with Lemon is a brilliant novel, full of sensual atmosphere, about a love triangle; its characters’ destinies marked by the interference of historical events in their lives.” —Avui “Fresh Mint with Lemon is a great novel of love, eroticism, and passion, of agreements and disagreements, that captivates with its sensual atmosphere, its vibrant brushstrokes, and its elusive outlines.” —El Temps “Monika Zgustova has written an exquisite story full of characters who act on feelings, people who, when necessary, express themselves through haikus.” —Avui “Love and eroticism season this seductive story from writer Monika Zgustova, a deep introspection into the feminine mind, already demonstrated in Goya’s Glass.” —ABC
Monika Zgustova was born in Prague and spent her formative years in the United States. She has published five novels, a collection of short stories, and a biography, and two of her plays have been staged. Her work has been translated into nine languages and has won several prestigious awards, including the 2009 Mercè Rodoreda Award for short fiction. She has also won critical acclaim for her novels The Silent Woman (2005), Winter Garden (2009), and Goya’s Glass (2012). Zgustova has translated more than fifty fiction books from Czech and Russian into both Spanish and Catalan. She currently lives in Barcelona, Spain, and regularly contributes opinion-editorial articles to the leading Spanish newspaper, El País.