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One of the last artistic expressions of life under communism, this
novel captures the atmosphere in Prague between 1983 and 1987,
where a dance could be broken up by the secret police, a traffic
offense could lead to surveillance, and where contraband books were
the currency of the underworld.
A New York Times Notable Book and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of
the Year, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light is the story
of Pavel, once a promising, award-winning documentary filmmaker,
forced to survive under communism by working as a cameraman for the
state-run television station. Now middle-aged, he dreams of one day
making a film -- a searing portrait of his times that the
authorities would never allow. When the communist regime collapses,
Pavel is unprepared for the new world of supposedly unlimited
freedom, unable to make the film he has always wanted to make.
Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light is a powerful,
important novel about the struggle between the ideal and the
temptations of freedom.
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. In No Saints or Angels, a Washington Post Best
Book of 2001, 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. No Saints or
Angels is a powerful book in which Mr. Klima's keen sense of
history, his deep compassion for the ordinary people caught up in
its toils, and his abiding awareness of the fragility and
resilience of human life shine through.... Like Anton Chekhov, Mr.
Klima is a writer able to show us what's extraordinary about
ordinary life. (The Washington Times). Ultimately, it's Prague,
with its centuries of glory and misery, that gives No Saints or
Angels its humane power. -- Melvin Jules Bukiet, The Washington
Post Book World A compassionate realist, [Klima] unflinchingly
presents the problems facing modern Prague and civilization in
general ... [and] fills it with mercy. -- Jennie Yabroff, San
Francisco Chronicle Stirring and valuable. -- Jules Verdone, The
Hartford Courant
When a beautiful stranger comes to hear him preach, Pastor Daniel
Vedra soon finds himself falling in love with another man's wife.
With the brilliance and humanity that have made him a major figure
in world literature, Ivan Klima explores the universal themes of
love, adultery and God.
Czech writer Vitezslav Nezval (1900-58) was one of the leading
Surrealist poets of the 20th century. "Prague with Fingers of Rain"
is his classic 1936 collection in which Prague's many-sided life -
its glamorous history, various weathers, different kinds of people
- becomes symbolic of what is contradictory and paradoxical in life
itself. Mixing real and surreal, Nezval evokes life's
contradictoriness in a series of psalm-like poems of puzzled love
and generous humanity. Nezval was perhaps the most prolific writer
in Prague during the 1920s and 30s. An original member of the
avant-garde group of artists Devetsil ("Butterbur", literally:
"Nine Forces"), he was a founding figure of the Poetist movement.
His numerous books included poetry collections, experimental plays
and novels, memoirs, essays and translations. His best work is from
the interwar period. Along with Karel Teige, Jindrich Aetyrsku, and
Toyen, Nezval frequently travelled to Paris, engaging with the
French surrealists. Forging a friendship with Andre Breton and Paul
Aeluard, he was instrumental in founding The Surrealist Group of
Czechoslovakia in 1934 (the first such group outside of France),
serving as editor of the group's journal Surrealismus. His mastery
of language and prosody was unparalleled - contemporaries referred
to it as wizardry. Alongside with surrealist poetry, he wrote poems
that sounded like genuine folksongs and for some time he teased the
Czech literary public by the anonymous publication of three books
attributed to a fictitious Robert David - one of 52 Villonesque
ballades, another of 100 sonnets, all in strict classical form. His
identity was guessed by the critics only because 'no one else would
be able to do that'. This selection from his seminal collection has
a specially commissioned foreword by Ivan Klima.
More than a memoir, My Crazy Century explores the ways in which the
epoch and its dominating totalitarian ideologies impacted the
lives, character, and morality of Klima's generation. Klima's story
begins in the 1930s, in the Terezin concentration camp outside of
Prague, where he was forced to spend almost four years of his
childhood. He reveals how the postwar atmosphere supported and
encouraged the spread of Communist principles over the next few
decades and how an informal movement to change the system developed
inside the Party. These political events form the backdrop to
Klima's personal experiences, with the arrest and trial of his
father; the early revolt of young writers against socialist
realism; his first literary successes; and his travels to the free
part of Europe, which strengthened his awareness of living as part
of a colossal lie. Klima also captures the brief period of
liberation during 1968's Prague Spring, in which he played an
active role; the Soviet invasion that crushed its political
reforms; the rise of the dissident movement; and the collapse of
the Communist regime in the middle of the Velvet Revolution of
1989. Including insightful essays on topics related to social
history, political thinking, love, and freedom, My Crazy Century
provides a profoundly rich and moving personal history of national
evolution. Ivan Klima's first autobiography and perhaps his most
significant work, it encapsulates a remarkable life largely lived
under occupation.
Part thriller, part domestic tragedy, at once political and
intensely personal, Ivan Kilma's epicly scaled new novel is an
inquest into the compromises that turned even the best citizens of
Czechoslovakia into accomplices of its late totalitarian regime.
"Enormously powerful."--New York Times Book Review.
Seven witty stories, one for each day of the week, give a vivid
picture of Prague before the Velvet Revolution.
The narrator of Ivan Klíma's novel has temporarily abandoned his work-in-progress - an essay on Kafka - and exchanged his writer's pen for the orange vest of a Prague road-sweeper. As he works, he meditates on Czechoslovakia, on Kafka, on life, on art and, obsessively, on his passionate and adulterous love affair with the sculptress Daria. Gradually he admits the impossibility of being at once an honest writer and an honest lover, and with that agonizing discovery comes a moment of choice.
From an internationally acclaimed Czech writer comes a shrewd, humane, and poignant novel, set in Prague before the Velvet Revolution, whose perceptions about love, conscience, and betrayal cut to the bone of life in both totalitarian and democratic societies. "A chilling story from the underground."--The New York Times.
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