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A dissident's deeply personal and unflinching view of Soviet oppression in Czechoslovakia in the wake of the 1968 invasion.

Seven Days to the Funeral is the fictionalized memoir of Ján Rozner, a leading Slovak journalist, critic, dramaturg, and translator. Rozner and his wife Zora Jesenská were champions of the Prague Spring and were blacklisted after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. When Jesenská died in 1972, her funeral became a political event and attendees faced recriminations.

A painstaking account of the week after his wife’s death, Seven Days to the Funeral is a historical record of the devastating impact of the period after the invasion. Through ruthless portraits of key figures in Slovak culture, the book provides a fascinating cultural history of Slovakia from 1945 to 1972. It is also a moving love story of an unlikely couple. Although Rozner began the book in 1976, it was left unfinished upon his death. The book was published posthumously in 2009 by his second wife Sláva Roznerová.

The first English translation of Josef Capek’s classic novella explores what happens when a single violent act changes everything.

Two young poachers are caught by a gamekeeper and, in a moment of panic, shoot him. What began as a reckless adventure in pursuit of a deer becomes a desperate and increasingly hopeless flight through the forest. 

Shadow of the Holly-Fern stands among the finest literary achievements of Josef Capek, the Czech painter and illustrator who died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 for his democratic convictions. The balladic novella is distinguished by its powerful portrayal of the fugitives’ inner lives; initially intoxicated by the beauty of the forest and a sense of freedom, they gradually succumb to mounting despair. Its intense focus on guilt and conscience recalls Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, while its language remains intensely lyrical and evocative. First published in 1930, the book remains one of the enduring masterpieces of Czech literature and is presented here in English for the first time in a lucid translation by Geoffrey Chew.

The authors of this treatise attempt to provide a deeper understanding of the economic and political transformations now taking place in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. They build up a detailed picture of the privatization process in the retail trade, catering and more general services. Not only are these sectors strongly relevant to consumers in these countries, but they also offer attractive possibilities for property ownership on a mass scale, as well as for the fostering of the small enterprises and entrepreneurial spirit that will be so important in the future.