Download or read book An Introduction to Twentieth Century Czech Fiction written by Robert Porter and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an appraisal od some of the best Czech fiction of the 20th century. After a brief introduction there are chapters on Hasek, Hrabal, Skorecky, Pavel, Klima and a final chapter on Hodrova, Viewegh and Topol.
Download or read book Daylight in Nightclub Inferno written by Elena Lappin and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of stories from post-Communist Czechoslovakia, many on the absurdity of life. Big Brother is gone, but is the capitalist rat race any better? A study of shattered hopes.
Download or read book Spaceman of Bohemia written by Jaroslav Kalfar and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intergalactic odyssey of love, ambition, and self-discovery. Orphaned as a boy, raised in the Czech countryside by his doting grandparents, Jakub Prochv°zka has risen from small-time scientist to become the country's first astronaut. When a dangerous solo mission to Venus offers him both the chance at heroism he's dreamt of, and a way to atone for his father's sins as a Communist informer, he ventures boldly into the vast unknown. But in so doing, he leaves behind his devoted wife, Lenka, whose love, he realizes too late, he has sacrificed on the altar of his ambitions. Alone in Deep Space, Jakub discovers a possibly imaginary giant alien spider, who becomes his unlikely companion. Over philosophical conversations about the nature of love, life and death, and the deliciousness of bacon, the pair form an intense and emotional bond. Will it be enough to see Jakub through a clash with secret Russian rivals and return him safely to Earth for a second chance with Lenka? Rich with warmth and suspense and surprise, Spaceman of Bohemia is an exuberant delight from start to finish. Very seldom has a novel this profound taken readers on a journey of such boundless entertainment and sheer fun. "A frenetically imaginative first effort, booming with vitality and originality . . . Kalfar's voice is distinct enough to leave tread marks."-Jennifer Senior, New York Times
Download or read book A Czech Dreambook written by Ludvík Vaculík and published by Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s 1979 in Czechoslovakia, ten years into the crushing restoration of repressive communism known as normalization, and Ludvík Vaculík has writer’s block. It has been nearly a decade since he wrote his last novel, and even longer since he wrote the 1968 manifesto, "Two Thousand Words,” which the Soviet Union used as one of the pretexts for invading Czechoslovakia. On the advice of a friend, Vaculík begins to keep a diary: "a book about things, people and events.” Fifty-four weeks later, what Vaculík has written is a unique mixture of diary, dream journal, and outright fiction – an inverted roman à clef in which the author, his family, his mistresses, the secret police and leading figures of the Czech underground play major roles.
Download or read book Contemporary Czech written by Michael Henry Heim and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Handbook of Polish Czech and Slovak Holocaust Fiction written by Elisa-Maria Hiemer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-06-21 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction aims to increase the visibility and show the versatility of works from East-Central European countries. It is the first encyclopedic work to bridge the gap between the literary production of countries that are considered to be main sites of the Holocaust and their recognition in international academic and public discourse. It contains over 100 entries offering not only facts about the content and motifs but also pointing out the characteristic fictional features of each work and its meaning for academic discourse and wider reception in the country of origin and abroad. The publication will appeal to the academic and broader public interested in the representation of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and World War II in literature and the arts. Besides prose, it also considers poetry and theatrical plays from 1943 through 2018. An introduction to the historical events and cultural developments in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Czech, and Slovak Republic, and their impact on the artistic output helps to contextualise the motif changes and fictional strategies that authors have been applying for decades. The publication is the result of long-term scholarly cooperation of specialists from four countries and several dozen academic centres.
Download or read book Gottland written by Mariusz Szczygiel and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Europe Book Prize One of Europe’s most preeminent investigative journalists travels to the Czech Republic—the Czech half of the former Czechoslovakia, the land that brought us Kafka—to explore the surreal fictions and the extraordinary reality of its twentieth century. For example, there’s the story of the small businessman who adopted Henry Ford’s ideas on productivity to create the world’s largest shoe company—and hired modernist giants such as Le Corbusier to design his company towns (which were also the birthplaces of Ivana Trump and Tom Stoppard). Or the story of Kafka’s niece, who loaned her name to writers blacklisted under the Communist regime so they could keep publishing. Or the story of the singer Karel Gott, winner of the country’s Best Male Vocalist Award thirty-six years in a row, whose summer home, Gottland, is the Czech Dollywood. Based on meticulous research and hundreds of interviews with everyone from filmmakers to writers to pop stars to ordinary citizens, Gottland is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a resilient people living through difficult and often bizarre times—equally funny, disturbing, stirring and absurd . . . in a word, Kafkaesque. From the Hardcover edition.
Download or read book The Other City written by Michal Ajvaz and published by Dalkey Archive Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hymn to the invisible 'other' Prague, lurking on the peripheries of the town so familiar to tourists.
Download or read book Summer of Caprice written by Vladislav Vančura and published by Karolinum Press. This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vladislav Vancura's Summer of Caprice is commonly considered untranslatable. The playful style of the narrative, the level of language mastering and also the development of the metatextual context of the last 80 years together form this unmistakable classic of Czech literature. Looking from this perspective our English edition is an experiment, thanks to the translation by Mark Corner on one side which inevitably - as every other translation - is an interpretation, and the original illustrations by Jiri Grus and the typography by Zdenek Ziegler on the other side. However, it is an experiment aiming to present an understanding of Czech spirit, humour and way of life.
Download or read book The JOKE written by Milan Kundera and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1993-02-26 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All too often, this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Now, a quarter century after The Joke was first published and several years after the collapse of the Soviet-imposed Czechoslovak regime, it becomes easier to put such implications into perspective in favor of valuing the book (and all Kundera 's work) as what it truly is: great, stirring literature that sheds new light on the eternal themes of human existence. The present edition provides English-language readers an important further means toward revaluation of The Joke. For reasons he describes in his Author's Note, Milan Kundera devoted much time to creating (with the assistance of his American publisher-editor) a completely revised translation that reflects his original as closely as any translation possibly can: reflects it in its fidelity not only to the words and syntax but also to the characteristic dictions and tonalities of the novel's narrators. The result is nothing less than the restoration of a classic.
Download or read book Innocence or Murder on Steep Street written by Heda Margolius Kovály and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This rediscovered masterpiece captures a chilling moment in the stifling early days of Communist Czechoslovakia. 1950s Prague is a city of numerous daily terrors, of political tyranny, corruption and surveillance. There is no way of knowing whether one’s neighbor is spying for the government, or what one’s supposed friend will say to a State Security agent under pressure. A loyal Party member might be imprisoned or executed as quickly as a traitor; innocence means nothing for a person caught in a government trap. When a little boy is murdered at the cinema, the ensuing investigation sheds a little too much light on the personal lives of the cinema’s female ushers, each of whom is hiding a dark secret of her own.
Download or read book The Unbearable Lightness of Being written by Milan Kundera and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2023-03-28 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every reader will respond.” — People In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of two couples, a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing, and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine. This magnificent novel is a story of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, and encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.
Download or read book Headed for the Blues written by Josef Skvorecky and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2012-06-19 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this acclaimed memoir, one of our most revered writers reveals the true story behind his highly autobiographical fiction - accompanied by ten dark and hilarious interconnected tales set in Czechoslovakia's jazz-filled underground.
Download or read book All the Bright Young Men and Women written by Josef Škvorecký and published by Toronto: P. Martin Associates. This book was released on 1971 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Peter Neil Issacs collection.
Download or read book The Czech Reader written by Jan Bažant and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-13 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frances Starn is a writer living in Berkeley, California. --Book Jacket.
Download or read book 19 Knives written by Mark Anthony Jarman and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2001 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With characters ranging from the desperate to the obsessive and wildly comic, Mark Anthony Jarman's 19 Knives employs dazzling linguistic verve and staggering metaphoric powers in every sentence. Jarman doesn't just write about people. He puts us in their skin so that we feel their frailty and courage. No other contemporary Canadian short story writer slices up the imaginative excitement, cultural hybridity, and Joycean play of language we see in 19 Knives. Including one story shortlisted for the U.S.'s prestigious O. Henry Prize, and several other prize-winners, this collection brings a major emerging fiction writer to the fore.
