Jan Patocka's contribution to phenomenology and the philosophy of history mean that he is considered one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. Yet, his writing is not widely available in English and the Anglophone world remains rather unfamiliar with his work. In this new book of essential Patocka texts, of which the majority have been translated from the original Czech for the first time, readers will experience a general introduction to the key tenets of his philosophy. This includes his thoughts on the relationship between philosophy and political engagement which strike at the heart of contemporary debates about freedom, political participation and responsibility and a truly pressing issue for modern Europe, what exactly constitutes a European identity? In this important collection, Patocka provides an original vision of the relationship between self, world, and history that will benefit students, philosophers and those who are interested in the ideals that underpin our democracies.

In the two-and-a-half decades since the end of the Cold War, policy makers have become acutely aware of the extent to which the world today faces mass atrocities. In an effort to prevent the death, destruction and global chaos wrought by these crimes, the agendas for both national and international policy have grown beyond conflict prevention to encompass atrocity prevention, protection of civilians, transitional justice and the responsibility to protect. Yet, to date, there has been no attempt to address the topic of the prevention of mass atrocities from the theoretical, policy and practicing standpoints simultaneously. This volume is designed to fill that gap, clarifying and solidifying the present understanding of atrocity prevention. It will serve as an authoritative work on the state of the field.

One of World Literature Today's 75 notable translations of 2017. A foul-mouthed Prague prostitute muses on her profession, aging, and the nature of materialism. She explains her world view in the scripts and commentaries of her own reality TV series, com

The Movement's founding ideology emphasises women should be valued for their inner qualities, spirit, and character, not for their physical attributes.Some men continue with unreformed attitudes but many submit - or are sent by their wives and daughters - to the Institute for internment and reeducation. Our narrator, an unapologetic guard at one of these reeducation facilities, describes how the Movement started, the challenges faced, her own personal journey, and what happens when a program fails. Outspoken, ambiguous, and terrifying, this socio-critical satire of our sexual norms sets the reader firmly outside of their comfort zone.

A brutally funny, carnivalesque novel about love, death, and survival, from the Czech Republic's greatest living author Tab, an itinerant Czech actor, travels around Europe on the theater circuit with his partner, Sona, and their two young sons, attending festivals and performing plays. Confronted with growing resentment toward foreigners, Tab decides to return home to the banks of the Sazava River, southeast of Prague. As soon as they arrive, Tab finds himself falsely accused of a terrible crime and forced to go on the run with his sons. Over the course of their journey, dodging authorities by car, foot, and raft, they encounter a motley cast of allies and enemies. The effects of Tab's sudden reappearance and just-as-sudden disappearance ripple through the community, catalyzing a chaotic chain of events that reaches a final, raucous crescendo. Hailed as "a picaresque romp of black humor and fantasy" (Times Literary Supplement), this is an unforgettable novel about discovering sparks of humanity even in the bleakest of places, in which love or the longing to find it lies around every bend.

Compassion, levity, and laughter can be found in the darkest of places--and even in the smallest of creatures. Set in 1943 Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, J. R. Pick's novella Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals tells the story of Tony, a thirteen-year-old boy who is deported from Prague to the infamous Terezi-n ghetto for Jews--the horrific, overcrowded concentration camp where one in four prisoners died of starvation or disease, and a way station on the way to Auschwitz. But it is not the atrocities Tony experiences that make his tale remarkable. It is his ability to find comedy in the incomprehensible. Tony suffers from tuberculosis, and, lying in his hospital bed one day, he decides to set up an animal welfare organization. Even though no animals are permitted in the camp, he is determined to find just one creature he can care for and protect--and his determination is contagious. A group of older boys including Tony's best friend, Ernie, aid him in his quest. Soon they're joined by Tony's mother--and her coterie of boyfriends. Eventually, they find Tony his pet: a mouse, which he names and carefully guards in a box hidden beneath his bed. But in the fall of 1944, the transports to Auschwitz begin. As moving as it is irreverent, Pick's novella draws on the two years he spent imprisoned in Terezi-n in his late teens. With cutting black humor, he shines a light on both the absurdities and injustices of the Nazi-run Jewish ghetto, using his literary artistry to portray in stunning shorthand an experience of the Holocaust that pure histories could never convey.

Written between 1954 and 1957 and treating events from the Stalinist era of Czechoslovakia's postwar Communist regime, Midway Upon the Journey of Our Life flew in the face of the reigning aesthetic of socialist realism, an anti-heroic novel informed by the literary theory of Viktor Shklovsky and constructed from episodes and lyrical sketches of the author and his neighbors' everyday life in industrial north Bohemia, set against a backdrop of historical and cultural upheaval. Meditative and speculative reflections here alternate and overlap with fragmentary accounts of Jedlicka's own biography and slices of the lives of people around him, typically rendered as overheard conversations. The narrative passages range in chronology from May 1945 to the early 1950s, with sporadic leaps through time as the characters go about the business of "building a new society" and the mythology that goes with it. Due to its critical view of socialist society, Midway remained unpublished until 1966, amid the easing of cultural control, but a complete version of this darkly comic novel did not appear in Czech until 1994.

Jan Patocka's contribution to phenomenology and the philosophy of history mean that he is considered one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. Yet, his writing is not widely available in English and the Anglophone world remains rather unfamiliar with his work. In this new book of essential Patocka texts, of which the majority have been translated from the original Czech for the first time, readers will experience a general introduction to the key tenets of his philosophy. This includes his thoughts on the relationship between philosophy and political engagement which strike at the heart of contemporary debates about freedom, political participation and responsibility and a truly pressing issue for modern Europe, what exactly constitutes a European identity? In this important collection, Patocka provides an original vision of the relationship between self, world, and history that will benefit students, philosophers and those who are interested in the ideals that underpin our democracies.

A dystopian page-turner about the coming of age of a young hero, which won the 2017 EU Prize for Literature. A fishing village at the end of the world. A lake that is drying up and, ominously, pushing out its banks. The men have vodka, the women troubles, the children eczema to scratch at. Born into this unforgiving environment, Nami, a young boy, embarks on a journey with nothing but a bundle of nerves, a coat that was once his grandfather's and the vague idea of searching for his mother, who disappeared from his life at a young age. To uncover the greatest mystery of his life, he must sail across and walk around the lake and finally dive to its bottom.

The nineteenth-century founding of "free settlements" in the Americas serves as a starting point for the new novel by popular Czech author Patrik Ouredn?k. Simultaneously satiric and philosophical, "The Opportune Moment, 1855," opens with an Italian anarchist's missive to his noble former mistress, an impassioned rejection of all of Europe's latest and greatest advancements, from the Enlightenment to social reform to communist revolution. We then leap back in time half a century to the alternately somber and hilarious shipboard diary of a common Italian everyman sailing to Brazil with a motley, multinational band of idealists, to build a new society. A pitiless portrait of the often unbridgeable gap between theory and practice, "The Opportune Moment, 1855" is another uproarious and unsettling attack on convention by one of literature's great provocateurs.

Angel Station takes its title from the bustling Metro stop in the Prague district of Smichov. Until the gentrification of the late 1990s, it was a rough-and-tumble, working-class neighborhood with a sizeable Roma and Vietnamese population. Topol's novel, in sparse yet poetic language-agilely brought into English by the author's longtime translator Alex Zucker-weaves together the brutal and disturbing fates of an addict, a shopkeeper, and a religious fanatic as they each follow the path they hope will lead them to serenity: drugs, money, and faith.

Centered on an elderly retiree and his intellectual adversary, the shrewd Inspector Lebeda, "Case Closed" is filled with all the expected elements of a thriller--murder, rape, suicide!--but soon reveals itself as a wily and sophisticated parable about the dangers of language itself, in which the author takes aim at human nature with a devastating arsenal of genre-mixing, wordplay, and whimsical, biting satire.