Translation of the front cover :
The Junebug Buzzes in the Air
Tomasz Grzyb-Hoffmann
A novel about a world where the falangist coup d'état in Silesia failed
1999 Slovak language edition of the famous Silesian alternate history thriller,
The Junebug Buzzes in the Air.
Written in the mid 1960s by the Silesian writer Tomasz Grzyb-Hoffmann, the novel imagines a world where the Falangist Party of Free Silesia (FPFS) never took control of the
Kingdom of Silesia in the 1930s. The basic POD and premise of the book is that a group of the kingdom's secret agents and police detectives uncover the FPFS's dastardly plot against the Silesian monarchy in time, thwart it and after a long struggle, hunt down and arrest all the FPFS conspirators. After the events, the Party is banned and the conspirators jailed for life or expelled permanently. While the novel ends on a high and optimistic note, the ending is a bit of a cliffhanger, with the author hinting that some of the Falangists might crave retribution or be up to no good in other parts of the world...
Besides the anti-FPFS alternate history plot, the novel also serves as a rebuttal and indictment of the ultranationalist ideology of the Silesian Falangists. Namely, it mocks the Party's many forgeries purported to be Silesian historical documents approving of their ideological course, as well as the Party's near-worship of the "
Silic Chronicle", a forgery of a supposed early medieval chronicle proving Silesian autochtony and ethnic superiority (created in the late 19th century by fanatical Silesian patriot Heinrich Slawomir von Bielau).
P.S. The title kind of parodies the novel-within-a-novel
The Grasshopper Lies Heavy from Philip K. Dick's
The Man in the High Castle.