Mr. Kafka: And Other Tales from the Time of the Cult

Description

Never before published in English, the stories in Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult were written mostly in the 1950s and present the Czech master Bohumil Hrabal at the height of his powers. The stories capture a time when Czech Stalinists were turning society upside down, inflicting their social and political experiments on mostly unwilling subjects. These stories are set variously in the gas-lit streets of post-war Prague; on the raucous and dangerous factory floor of the famous Poldi steelworks where Hrabal himself once worked; in a cacophonous open-air dance hall where classical and popular music come to blows; at the basement studio where a crazed artist attempts to fashion a national icon; on the scaffolding around a decommissioned church. Hrabal captures men and women trapped in an eerily beautiful nightmare, longing for a world where “humor and metaphysical escape can reign supreme.”
Binding Type: Paperback
Contributors: Bohumil Hrabal,Paul Wilson (Translator)
Published: 10/27/2015
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
ISBN: 9780811224802
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 0.40″ H x 7.90″ L x 5.10″ W

About the Author
Hrabal, Bohumil: – Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) was born in Moravia. He is the author of such classics as Closely Watched Trains (made into an Academy-Award winning film by Jiri Menzel), The Death of Mr. Baltisberger, I Served the King of England, and Too Loud a Solitude.Wilson, Paul: – Paul Wilson has translated books by Václav Havel, Bohumil Hrabal, Ivan Klima and Josef Skvorecký. He lives in Canada.