front cover of We Were a Handful
We Were a Handful
Karel Polácek
Karolinum Press, 2007

A favorite work of Czech humor, We Were a Handful depicts the adventures of five boys from a small Czech town through the diary of Petr Bajza, the grocer’s son. Written by Karel Poláček at the height of World War II before his deportation to Auschwitz in 1944, this book draws on the happier years of Poláček’s own childhood as inspiration. As we look upon the world through Petr’s eyes, we, too, marvel at the incomprehensible world of grownups; join in fights between gangs of neighborhood kids; and laugh at the charming language of boys, a major source of the book’s humor. This translation at last offers English-language readers the opportunity to share in Petr’s (and Poláček’s) childhood and reminds us that joy and laughter are possible even in the darkest times.

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front cover of We Were a Handful
We Were a Handful
Karel Polácek
Karolinum Press, 2007

A favorite work of Czech humor, We Were a Handful depicts the adventures of five boys from a small Czech town through the diary of Petr Bajza, the grocer’s son. Written by Karel Poláček at the height of World War II before his deportation to Auschwitz in 1944, this book draws on the happier years of Poláček’s own childhood as inspiration. As we look upon the world through Petr’s eyes, we, too, marvel at the incomprehensible world of grownups; join in fights between gangs of neighborhood kids; and laugh at the charming language of boys, a major source of the book’s humor. This translation at last offers English-language readers the opportunity to share in Petr’s (and Poláček’s) childhood and reminds us that joy and laughter are possible even in the darkest times.

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front cover of The Well at Morning
The Well at Morning
Selected Poems, 1925–1971
Bohuslav Reynek
Karolinum Press, 2017
Springtide
 
A chaffinch in a tree
of cherry sings merrily
spring’s introit.
 
Its blazing bobble dwells
in leaves, alive, and swells
in scarlet.
 
The flowers are flares of white.
The chaffinch has gone quiet
and turned sky-gazer.
 
My eyes close on the day:
an orb revolves in grey
and red and azure.
 
Poet and artist Bohuslav Reynek spent most of his life in the relative obscurity of the Czech-Moravian Highlands; although he suffered at the hands of the Communist regime, he cannot be numbered among the dissident poets of Eastern Europe who won acclaim for their political poetry in the second half of the twentieth century. Rather, Reynek belongs to an older pastoral-devotional tradition—a kindred spirit to the likes of English-language poets Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Wordsworth, Robert Frost, and Edward Thomas. The Well at Morning presents a selection of poems from across his life and is illustrated with twenty-five of his own color etchings. Also featuring three essays by leading scholars that place Reynek’s life and work alongside those of his better-known peers, this book presents a noted Czech artist to the wider world, reshaping and amplifying our understanding of modern European poetry.
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Why I Write?
The Early Prose from 1945 to 1952
Bohumil Hrabal
Karolinum Press, 2019
“Glimmers in anticipation of Hrabal’s later virtuosity.”
New Yorker

 
“A collection of formative fiction from a writer whose work has earned comparison with Joyce and Beckett. . . . Early work from a writer who merits a larger readership.”
Kirkus Reviews


This collection of the earliest prose by one of literature’s greatest stylists captures, as scholar Arnault Maréchal put it, “the moment when Hrabal discovered the magic of writing.” Taken from the period when Bohumil Hrabal shifted his focus from poetry to prose, these stories—many written in school notebooks, typed and read aloud to friends, or published in samizdat—often showcase raw experiments in style that would define his later works. Others intriguingly utilize forms the author would never pursue again. Featuring the first appearance of key figures from Hrabal’s later writings, such as his real-life Uncle Pepin, who would become a character in his later fiction and is credited here as a coauthor of one piece, the book also contains stories that Hrabal would go on to cannibalize for some of his most famous novels. All together, Why I Write? offers readers the chance to explore this important nascent phase of Hrabal’s writing.

Expertly interpreted by award-winning Hrabal translator David Short, this collection comprises some of the last remaining prose works by Hrabal to be translated into English. A treasure trove for Hrabal devotees, Why I Write? allows us to see clearly why this great prose master was, as described by Czech writer and publisher Josef Škvorecký, “fundamentally a lyrical poet.”
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front cover of Why So Easily . . . Some Family Reasons for the Velvet Revolution
Why So Easily . . . Some Family Reasons for the Velvet Revolution
A Sociological Essay
Ivo Možný
Karolinum Press, 2023
A famed essay examines the Velvet Revolution from a sociological perspective.
 
Thirty-two years after its initial publication, this respected sociological essay, written in the history-making years of 1989 and 1990, is available for the first time in English. The essay tells the story of a despotic Socialist state expropriating the family (and with it the private sphere of life) only to be colonized by the very thing it expropriated forty years later. The essay plunges the reader into the pivotal time of the Velvet Revolution and provides valid explanations for the grassroots causes of the old regime’s downfall, examining the private aspirations and strategies of highly disparate groups of nameless social actors of the old regime that eventually sapped almost everyone of any interest in keeping the regime afloat.
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front cover of A World Apart and Other Stories
A World Apart and Other Stories
Czech Women Writers at the Fin de Siècle
Edited and Translated by Kathleen Hayes
Karolinum Press, 2021
A collection of short stories by Czech women from the turn of the twentieth century.

A World Apart brings together translations of eight stories by Czech women from the turn of the twentieth century—a period of female political emancipation and impressive literary development in Czechoslovakia. Though they’re little known to an English-language public today, all of the writers featured in the book were recognized in their own day and constitute a cross-section of the literary styles of the period. Anna Maria Tilschová’s “A Sad Time” is written in a naturalist style, while Růžena Jesenská’s “A World Apart” presents themes and motifs that appealed to the Decadents. Helena Malířová’s “The Sylph” is both diaristic and satirical, whereas Růžena Svobodová’s ironical “A Great Passion,” with its rural setting and folklore motifs, calls to mind the writings of Karel Jaromír Erben. Gabriela Preissová’s short story “Eva” may be read as a celebration of folk culture, and  Božena Benešová’s “Friends” is interesting for its psychological presentation of a child’s point of view and its implicit criticism of anti-Semitism. The book is accompanied by the biographies of each author and an introduction by editor and translator Kathleen Hayes.
 
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front cover of Writing Underground
Writing Underground
Reflections on Samizdat Literature in Totalitarian Czechoslovakia
Martin Machovec
Karolinum Press, 2019
In this collection of writings produced between 2000 and 2018, the pioneering literary historian of the Czech underground, Martin Machovec, examines the multifarious nature of the underground phenomenon. After devoting considerable attention to the circle surrounding the band The Plastic People of the Universe and their manager, the poet Ivan M. Jirous, Machovec turns outward to examine the broader concept of the underground, comparing the Czech incarnation not only with the movements of its Central and Eastern European neighbors, but also with those in the world at large. In one essay, he reflects on the so-called Půlnoc Editions, which published illegal texts in the darkest days of the late forties and early fifties. In other essays, Machovec examines the relationship between illegal texts published at home (samizdat) and those smuggled out to be published abroad (tamizdat), as well as the range of literature that can be classified as samizdat, drawing attention to movements frequently overlooked by literary critics. In his final, previously unpublished essay, Machovec examines Jirous’s “Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival” not as a merely historical document, but as literature itself.
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