Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Nancy Hawker
(ed).
Povidky: Short Stories by Czech Women
. Varied collection of stories
writtenbywomenacrossthegenerations,setvariouslyagainstabackgroundofpre-andpost-
Communist times.
Bohumil Hrabal
Hrabal is a thoroughly mischievous writer. The slim but superb
Closely
Observed Trains
isapostwarclassic, setinthelastdaysofthewarandrelentlessly unheroic;
it wasmade into anequally brilliant film byJiří Menzl.
I Served the King of England
follows
the antihero Díte, who works at the
Hotel Paříž
, through the decade after 1938.
Too Loud a
Solitude
,aboutawaste-paperdisposerundertheCommunists,hasalsobeenmadeintoafilm
by Menzl.
Alois Jirásek
Old Czech Legends
. A major figure in the nineteenth-century Czech
národní
obrození
,JirásekpopularizedBohemia'slegendarypast.Thiscollection includesalltheclas-
sic texts, as well as the story of the founding of the city by the prophetess Libuše.
Franz Kafka
A German-Jewish Praguer, Kafka has drawn the darker side of central
Europe - its claustrophobia, paranoia and unfathomable bureaucracy - better than anyone
else, both in a rural setting, as in
The Castle
, and in an urban one, in one of the great novels
of the twentieth century,
The Trial
.
Jan Kaplan
A Traveler's Companion to Prague
. A compilation of memoirs, letters and ex-
tracts from diaries and novels, from the medieval to modern, to accompany a stroll round
Prague.
Ivan Klíma
A survivor of Terezín, Klíma is another writer in the Kundera mould as far as
sexual politics goes, but his stories are a lot lighter.
Judge on Trial
, written in the 1970s, is
one of his best, concerning the moral dilemmas of a Communist judge.
Waiting for the Dark,
Waiting for the Light
is a pessimistic novel set before, during and after the Velvet Revolution
of 1989.
The Spirit of Prague
is a very readable collection of biographical and more general
essaysonsubjectsrangingfromKlíma'schildhoodexperiencesinTerezíntothecurrentsitu-
ation in Prague.
No Saints or Angels
is a fairly bleak novel set in post-revolutionary Prague,
and exploring three different generations' reactions to the fall of Communism.
Between Se-
curity and Insecurity
takes a look at modern values in society, their causes and their possible
futures.
PavelKohout
Widow Killer
and
I am Snowing: The Confessions of a Woman of Prague
.The
latter is set in the uneasy period just after the fall of Communism amid accusations of col-
laboration.
Widow Killer
is a thriller about a naive Czech detective partnered with a Gestapo
agent in the last months of World War II in German-occupied Prague.
Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera is the country's most popular writer - at least with non-
Czechs. His early books were very obviously “political”, particularly
The Book of Laughter
and Forgetting
,whichledtheCommuniststorevokeKundera'scitizenship.
The Joke
,written
while he was still living in Czechoslovakia and in many ways his best work, is set in the
