BiblioVault

The Chattertooth Eleven

Eduard Bass

Karolinum Press, 2009

In 1922, the same year that saw the establishment of the Czechoslovak Football Association, a former singer and cabaret director from Prague published a novel about soccer. Eighty-six years later, that novel, Eduard Bass’s The Chattertooth Eleven, has been reprinted more than thirty times, has been made into a film, and has become one of the most popular works of Czech fiction.

The novel tells the extraordinary adventures of an ordinary father, Chattertooth, and his eleven sons—whom he has raised as an unbeatable soccer team. This humorous tale—set in the aftermath of World War I—celebrates fair play and perseverance while simultaneously taking a gently ironic stance towards the Czech infatuation with soccer. This edition, in a new graphic layout by Zdenek Ziegler, is accompanied by charming illustrations by Jirí Grus.

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Studies of Homeric Greece

Jan Bouzek

Karolinum Press, 2018

Studies of Homeric Greece is a comprehensive companion to the archaeology and history of Late Mycenaean to Geometric Greece and the koine of Early Iron Age Geometric styles in Europe and Upper Eurasia, circa 1300–700 BC, in relation to their Near Eastern neighbors. Jan Bouzek discusses this pivotal period of human history—the transition from Bronze to Iron Age, from the pre-philosophical to philosophical mind, from myth to logos—in an attempt to combine archaeological evidence with the words of Homer and Hesiod, and the first Phoenician and Greek trading ventures. In doing so, Bouzek surveys the birth of autonomous Greek city-states, their art, and their free citizenry. Featuring numerous maps, drawings, and photographs, Studies of Homeric Greece is the capstone of a luminary in the field.

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Confronting Totalitarian Minds

Jan Patocka on Politics and Dissidence

Aspen Brinton

Karolinum Press, 2020

Jan Patočka was a Czech philosopher who not only lived through the turbulent politics of twentieth-century Central Europe, but he shaped his intellectual contributions in response to that tumult. One of the last students of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, he was a philosophical inspiration to Václav Havel and other dissidents who confronted the Soviet regimes before 1989, as well as being actively involved in authoring and enacting Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia. He died in 1977 from medical complications resulting from interrogations of the secret police, his political involvement cut short by an untimely death.

Confronting Totalitarian Minds examines his legacy along with several contemporary applications of his ideas about dissidence, solidarity, and the human being’s existential confrontation with unjust politics. Aspen Briton puts Patočka’s ideas about dissidence, citizen mobilization, and civic responsibility in conversation with those of notable world historical figures like Mohandas Gandhi, expanding the current possibilities of comparative political theory. In adding a fresh voice to contemporary conversations on transcending injustice, Confronting Totalitarian Minds seeks to educate a wider audience about this philosopher’s continued relevance to political dissidents across the world.

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Baden, Kostolac, Vucedol and Vinkovci

The Late Eneolithic, Transition Period, and Early Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin and the Western Balkans

Želimir Brnic

Karolinum Press, 2024

An archeological history of the indigenous cultures of the Carpathian Basin.

Baden, Kostolac, Vucedol and Vinkovci uses archaeology and genetics to create a novel cultural and historical interpretation of the Carpathian Basin during the Late Eneolithic period. The author traces the linear development of indigenous cultures from the Baden Culture through the Kostolac Culture to the Vucedol Culture, before positing that certain qualitative and quantitative shifts were driven by the entry of foreign populations—the Pit Grave Culture and the Bell Beaker Culture—into the Carpathian Basin.

The book also analyzes the emergence of the Early Bronze Age, establishing an absolute chronology, and examines the Vucedol Culture’s influence on geographically distant Bronze Age groups. An appendix also includes a discussion of findings that, while outside the Carpathian Basin, are part of its cultural sphere.

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Contemporary Funeral Rituals of Sa'dan Toraja

From Aluk Todolo to "New" Religions

Michaela Budiman

Karolinum Press, 2013

The Sa’dan Toraja are an ethnic group who live primarily on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. This rigorous academic study by noted expert Michaela Budiman examines the deep cultural shifts among the Toraja during the last century through the lens of their most important ritual— funerals. This book specifically addresses the conversion of the Toraja from their indigenous religion, Aluk Todolo, to Christianity and how this shift is reflected in their contemporary funeral practices and understanding of both death and grief.

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Beyond Decadence

Exposing the Narrative Irony in Jan Opolský's Prose

Peter Butler

Karolinum Press, 2015

Jan Opolský has primarily been viewed as an undistinguished hanger-on in the era of Czech literary decadence. Through close reading and detailed analysis of Opolský’s prose, however, Peter Butler argues that, far from his reputation as a literary lackey, Opolský is a master of sustained narrative irony and an accomplished writer in his own right. Beyond Decadence evaluates archival sources and private correspondence between Opolský and other literary figures, and includes a classified bibliography of Opolský’s work. Butler’s introduction, meanwhile, offers an overview of the Czech decadent/symbolist literary and artistic movements, placing them within a larger European perspective. Redeeming a literary artist who has been nearly forgotten in the English-speaking world, Beyond Decadence will be of particular interest to students of Slavic and European literary history.

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