Gerald Turner Books

A captivating three-generational saga set in the twentieth century, beginning when time was linear and ending with a less well-defined notion of progress.

Next to Vaclav Havel, Milan Šimečka was the most important, and most widely translated, dissident opposing Czechoslovakia's communist regime. Many of his essays and articles appeared in leading American and British periodicals during the 1970s and 80s, and his book, The Restoration of Order ( Verso, 1984), is considered a brilliant analysis of real socialism and the neo-Stalinist normalization policy instituted under Gustav Husak.Simecka was imprisoned from 1981-82 under Paragraph 98 of the Criminal Code ("Subversion of the Republic"). His smuggling his texts out of the country to be published abroad. The letters in this volume were written during his stay in prison. In them he was not allowed to mention politics, so he wrote about people, love, and human relations. The selection of letters presented here bear witness to his attitude to other people, to his imprisonment and the period in which he lived, as well as his personal philosophy. They contain philosophical reflections as well as practical advice to his sons and words of encouragement to his wife. Similar to Havel's Letters to Olga, Šimečka's Letters from Prison give us a glimpse into the difficult struggle undertaken by Czechoslovak dissidents in opposition to a Soviet-styled regime that was considered the most hard-line in Eastern Europe.

Kniha rozhovorů naší přední novinářky se šesti ženami o jejich pohledu na rusko-čečenskou válku.

Told in an informal, mesmerizing voice, Ouredník represents the twentieth century in all its contradictions and grand illusions, demonstrating that nothing substantial has changed between 1900 and 1999—humanity is still hopeful for the future and still mired in age-old conflicts. As he demonstrates that nothing can be reduced to a single, true viewpoint, Ouredník mixes hard facts and idiosyncratic observations, highlighting the horror and absurdity of the twentieth century and the further absurdity of attempting to narrate this history.

Ivan Klima has been acclaimed by The Boston Globe as "a literary gem who is too little appreciated in the West" and a "Czech master at the top of his game." Now Klima takes us into the heart of contemporary Prague, where the Communist People's Militia of the Stalinist era marches headlong into the drug culture of the present.Kristyna is in her forties, the divorced mother of a rebellious fifteen-year-old daughter, Jana. She is beginning to love a man fifteen years her junior, but her joy is clouded by worry -- Jana has been cutting school, and perhaps using heroin. Meanwhile Kristyna's mother has forced on her a huge box of personal papers left by her dead father, a tyrant whose Stalinist ideals she despised.