Michael Henry Heim Books

This is the first novel by the author of Immortality, which won The Independent Award for Foreign Fiction in 1991. Milan Kundera is also the author of The Book of Laughter and Fogetting.

TOO LOUD A SOLITUDE is a tender and funny story of Hant'a - a man who has lived in a Czech police state - for 35 years, working as compactor of wastepaper and books. In the process of compacting, he has acquired an education so unwitting he can't quite tell which of his thoughts are his own and which come from his books. He has rescued many from jaws of hydraulic press and now his house is filled to the rooftops. Destroyer of the written word, he is also its perpetuator. But when a new automatic press makes his job redundant there's only one thing he can do - go down with his ship. This is an eccentric romp celebrating the indestructability- against censorship, political opression etc - of the written word.

An entrancing collection of short stories from a renowned 20th century European writer, now part of Penguin Modern Classics, features a counter-prophet striving to prove his power, a girl witnessing her family's grim fate through a gypsy's mirror, and the unexpected uprising following a prostitute's death. These narratives explore themes of love and death, truth and lies, myth and reality, spanning various epochs and settings. The author masterfully blends fact with fiction, and horror with comedy in this final work, published in Serbo-Croatian in 1983. Recognized as one of the great European writers of the post-war era, his writing is described as compulsively readable, with a unique blend of fantasy and reality reminiscent of Pirandello and Borges, yet distinctly original. His intense and exotic mysteries suggest unspeakable secrets that remain elusive. Born in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1935, the author experienced a turbulent childhood during World War II, which claimed several family members. He later studied literature at the University of Belgrade, where he spent most of his life, producing novels, short stories, and poetry, and receiving the prestigious NIN Award for his novel Pešcanik before his death in Paris in 1989.

In this novel - a story of irreconcilable loves and infidelities - Milan Kundera addresses himself to the nature of twentieth-century 'Being' 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. We feel, says the novelist, 'the unbearable lightness of being' - not only as the consequence of our private acts but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.Juxtaposing Prague, Geneva, Thailand and the United States, this masterly novel encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, and embraces, it seems, all aspects of human existence. It offers a wide range of brilliant and amusing philosophical speculations and it descants on a variety of styles.

Attempting to go beyond the cliche of Prague as the golden city , this book brings out all its mystery, ambiguity, gloom, lethargy and hidden fascination. More than a literary and cultural history of Prague, this book seeks to be both a celebration and requiem for an oppressed culture.

The pieces collected in Lend Me Your Character—the novella "Steffie Cvek in the Jaws of Life" and a collection of short stories entitled Life Is a Fairy Tale— solidify Dubravka Ugresic's reputation as one of Eastern Europe's most playful and inventive writers. From the story of Steffie Cvek, a harassed and vulnerable typist whose life is shaped entirely by clichés as she searches relentlessly for an elusive romantic love in a narrative punctuated by threadbare advice from women's magazines and constructed like a sewing pattern, to "The Kharms Case," one of Ugresic's funniest stories ever about the strained relationship between a persistent translator and an unresponsive publisher, the pieces in this collection are always smart and endlessly entertaining.

Kundera whirls through comedy and tragedy towards his central question: how does a person, any person, live today? In constructing his answer, he writes of politics, sex, literature, modern man's alienation - and of their antidotes: laughter and forgetting.

Un attempato professore sconvolto dalla visione di uno splendido adolescente, uno strano amore nato in un sanatorio, un'incerta vocazione letteraria che si scontra con un richiamo alla normalità borghese. Grottesco e tragedia si intrecciano paradossalmente nei tre brevi capolavori del più importante scrittore tedesco della prima metà del novecento.

This ebullient, gallivanting novel encapsulates the world vision of the Czech Republic's best-loved author in one tumbling, breathtaking sentence. Saints and sinners, emperors and embezzlers, barmaids and balalaikas all play their part in the bawdy reminiscences of Hrabal's cobbler as he charms an audience of young beauties.

This is a collection of Neruda's funny, wry, biter-sweet and illuminating stories about life for the inhabitants of the Old Quarter of 19th-century Prague.

Developed by Professor Michael Heim (UCLA), the text contains grammar, extensive model sentences, and exercises (Part 1) and a series of review lessons (Part 2). Vocabulary and sentences are recorded along with a selection of exercises. Czech-English, English-Czech glossaries are provided. This intermediate course is particularly helpful for those who have a command of Russian. text. Product no. AFCZ10D