The narrative follows Hrabal as he receives the advance copy of his debut short story collection, marking the beginning of his literary career. It explores his ascent in the Czech literary scene, highlighting his connections with prominent artists and writers, while also showcasing the international acclaim he achieves with works like Closely Watched Trains. The story delves into themes of creativity, recognition, and the cultural landscape of Czechoslovakia during his rise as a writer.
This collection of the earliest prose by one of literature’s greatest stylists captures, as scholar Arnault Maréchal put it, “the moment when Hrabal discovered the magic of writing.” Taken from the period when Bohumil Hrabal shifted his focus from poetry to prose, these stories—many written in school notebooks, typed and read aloud to friends, or published in samizdat—often showcase raw experiments in style that would define his later works. Others intriguingly utilize forms the author would never pursue again. Featuring the first appearance of key figures from Hrabal’s later writings, such as his real-life Uncle Pepin, who would become a character in his later fiction and is credited here as a coauthor of one piece, the book also contains stories that Hrabal would go on to cannibalize for some of his most famous novels. All together, Why I Write? offers readers the chance to explore this liminal phase of Hrabal’s writing. Expertly interpreted by award-winning Hrabal translator David Short, this collection comprises some of the last remaining prose works by Hrabal to be translated into English. A treasure trove for Hrabal devotees, Why I Write? allows us to see clearly why this great prose master was, as described by Czech writer and publisher Josef Škvorecký, “fundamentally a lyrical poet.”
Set against the backdrop of Communist repression in Prague, the memoir offers a personal glimpse into the life of Elis.ka, Bohumil Hrabal's wife, during the tumultuous 1950s to 1970s. Through her eyes, readers experience the struggles and resilience of artists navigating a stifling regime, highlighting the intimate and often challenging dynamics of their relationship amidst societal constraints. The narrative captures both the beauty and the hardship of life during a pivotal era in Czech history.
The Gentle Barbarian is Bohumil Hrabal's homage to Vladim r Boudn k, one of the greatest Czech visual artists of the 1950s and 1960s, whose life came to a tragic end shortly after the Soviet invasion of 1968. Boudnik and Hrabal had a close and often contentious friendship. For a brief period, in the early 1950s, they both worked in the steel works in Kladno and lived in the same building in Prague. Written in the early seventies, Hrabal's anecdotal portrait of Boudnik includes another controversial member of that early group of the Czech avant-garde: the poet Egon Bondy. While Hrabal and Bondy were evolving their aesthetic of "total realism," Boudnik developed his own artistic approach that he called "Explosionalism," in which the boundaries between life and art become blurred, and everyday events take on the appearance and the substance of art. Hrabal's portrait of Boudnik captures the strange atmosphere of a time in which the traditional values and structures of everyday life in Czechoslovakia were being radically dismantled by the Communists. But as The Gentle Barbarian demonstrates, creative spirits are able to reject, ignore, or burrow beneath the superficial "revolutionary" atmosphere of the time, and find humor, inspiration, and a kind of salvation amidst its general intellectual and creative poverty.
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.
Set against a backdrop of intrigue and suspense, the narrative explores the mysterious circumstances surrounding Mr. Baltisberger's death. As characters grapple with secrets and revelations, themes of loss, identity, and the impact of past actions unfold. The story delves into the complexities of human relationships, revealing how interconnected lives can lead to unexpected consequences. Through its rich character development and engaging plot, the book offers a thought-provoking examination of mortality and the search for truth.
Novelist Bohumil Hrabal (1914–97) was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia and spent decades working at a variety of laboring jobs before turning to writing in his late forties. From that point, he quickly made his mark on the Czech literary scene; by his death he was ranked with Jaroslav Hašek, Karel Capek, and Milan Kundera as among the nation’s greatest twentieth-century writers. Known for writing about political questions with humor and vivid expressiveness, Hrabal also was given to experimentation—his early novel Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age , for example, consists of a single extended sentence.Pirouettes on a Postage Stamp carried Hrabal’s experimentation to the field of autobiography. On its surface a verbatim record of an oral interview conducted by Hungarian journalist László Szigeti, the book confuses and confounds with false starts, digressions, and philosophical asides. Yet despite all the games and distractions, Hrabal’s personality shines through, compelling and unforgettable, making Pirouette on a Postage Stamp an unexpected treat for any lover of Czech literature.
Tato kniha byla vydána českým nakladatelstvím Twisted Spoon Press, které sídlí v Praze a vydává díla českých a slovanských autorů v anglickém jazyce.
Oficiální anotace nakladatele: In these letters written to April Gifford (Dubenka) between 1989 and 1991 but never sent, Bohumil Hrabal (1914–97) chronicles the momentous events of those years as seen, more often than not, from the windows of his favorite pubs. In his palavering, stream-of-conscious style that has marked him as one of the major writers and innovators of postwar European literature, Hrabal gives a humorous and at times moving account of life in Prague under Nazi occupation, Communism, and the brief euphoria following the revolution of 1989 when anything seemed possible, even pink tanks. Interspersed are fragmented memories of trips taken to Britain — as he attempted to track down every location mentioned in Eliot’s “The Waste Land” — and the United States, where he ends up in one of Dylan Thomas’s haunts comparing the waitresses to ones he knew in Prague. The result is a masterful blend of personal history and fee association rendered in a prose as powerful as it is poetic.
