In Europe, taking a walk is a cultural phenomenon having an almost mystical import. It connects physical activity with meditation, silence within amid the tumult without. Taking its cue both from Joyce's Ulysses and Hrabal's stream of anecdote, Of Kids & Parents is about a father and son taking a walk through Prague, over the course of which, and in the pubs and bars they stop into, their personal lives are revealed as entwined with the past sixty years of upheaval in their corner of Europe. One's small history is inseparable from the large History that is played out on the world's stage: families are uprooted, relationships fail, and still life goes on as it always does. Hakl's genius is his ability to mesh the two into a seamless flow of dialogue. As the father tells his son: "Nothing's been new in this world for more than two billion years, it's all just variations on the same theme of carbon, hydrogen, helium, and nitrogen." The point being that even though Prague over the course of a century has experienced monarchy, democracy, fascism, communism, and democratic capitalism once again, as wars, putsches, and revolutions have come and gone, what really has changed? The novel was awarded the Magnesia Litera Book of the Year in 2002 and is currently being made into a feature film due for release in 2008.
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At the end of the twentieth century, an elderly father and his middle-aged son walk the streets of Prague, stopping for one, or two, or more beers or juniper brandies en route. A retired scientist and a writer, respectively, they’re easy with one another’s expert interjections into a colloquy consisting of stories they’ve lived or heard that could be any Czech’s; some of them could be anyone’s, including the most outlandish, an insidious anecdote about urban cannibalism. Since the father grew up in World War II Croatia, where the Ustasi rather than the Nazis almost killed him, and the son turned 10 when Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring of 1968, they know what living in something close to hell is like, and graveyard humor courses through their palaver. At the end of their ramble, the son puts his father into a cab, and his nagging conscience makes him wonder how many more such outings there will be. Skittishly insouciant, direly funny, this is a small, Waiting for Godot-ish gem. --Ray Olson
Review
"This virile sentimentality is quite exceptional in contemporary art and is ultimately the real core of Hakl's writing, though at first glance it might seem that this core has been fragmented into anecdotes." -- Jiri Penas, Tyden
"To my mind, Emil Hakl is one of the more interesting Czech writers today." -- Jan Culik, Britska listy
"To my mind, Emil Hakl is one of the more interesting Czech writers today." -- Jan Culik, Britska listy
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This review is from: Of Kids & Parents (Paperback)
A very interesting dialogue between a father and son as they meander through Prague and memories mainly political, aeronautical, and personal. Witty, insightful, poignant, its appeal still may be mainly to those who cherich Middle European litereature and, in particular, Czech humor. An easy read for a long plane ride.
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