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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
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The Movement (Paperback)
Petra Hulova; Translated by Alex Zucker
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R393
R322
Discovery Miles 3 220
Save R71 (18%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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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.
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The Lake (Paperback)
Bianca Bellova; Edited by Susie Wild; Translated by Alex Zucker
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R297
R242
Discovery Miles 2 420
Save R55 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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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.
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Angel Station (Paperback)
Jachym Topol; Translated by Alex Zucker
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R369
R309
Discovery Miles 3 090
Save R60 (16%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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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.
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Case Closed (Paperback)
Patrik Ou redn ik; Translated by Alex Zucker
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R256
Discovery Miles 2 560
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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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.
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