Life’s a Game You Play – Libor Mikeska

A story of two inseparable friends, Lucinda and Sarah, who become intent on finding out the truth about certain closely guarded secrets which, it appears, no one is allowed to discover.
A time of awakening and personal development ensues as they leave the nurturing nest of home. They lose contact for almost twenty years before facts that had been kept secret by their respective families start to come to light.
Having worked as a teacher for far longer than she can bear, Lucinda decides to take a sabbatical leave. She ceremoniously destroys her smartphone before she embarks on an extended journey to the Czech Republic, where she is in a much better position to unravel the mystery surrounding her grandmother Irma’s intriguing past. Lucinda does not leave any stone unturned in her ancestral Czech hometown until her curiosity is quenched. Is there really more to the eccentric grandmother than meets the eye? She could hardly be capable of anything immoral or subversive, could she?
Sarah for her part finds herself in Australia, after her parents decide to emigrate there to look after their own ageing parents, who had originally been sent there in the early fifties on strict orders from British Intelligence. In his eagerness to confess a multitude of personal tribulations that have been plaguing his mind for decades, Sarah’s grandfather starts to keep a diary.
The reader is taken through various stages of Sarah's life in Melbourne before her painting career takes off. Various twists of fate prove to her that whatever thoughts she keeps in her mind eventually come true in her life. When Sarah's grandfather gradually divulges the contents of his memoirs to her, her life is turned upside down once again as she begins a desperate search for Lucinda, since only together can they finally get to the bottom of the mystery.