This Side of Reality: Modern Czech Short Stories (Modern Short Stories) [Paperback]

Alexandra Büchler (Editor, Translator)

Book Description

Series: Modern Short Stories | Publication Date: June 1, 1996

For most of the second half of the 20th century, Czech literature has existed in a state of fragmentation, subjected to censorship. Many of the stories told here share a sense of confined experience and a desire to cross boundaries in a quest for freedom and meaning in life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The ghost of Franz Kafka hovers over the bulk of the surreal and absurdist stories collected in this anthology of Czech writing edited by translator and Czech expatriate Buchler. Unfortunately, what was visionary in an isolated turn of the century genius is rather formulaic in the work collected here. The anthology draws mostly on fiction written during the chill that followed the Prague Spring of 1968, much of which was originally published in underground editions. However, two of the collection's strongest pieces are also the most recent, written after the collapse of communism. The extract from Ludvik Vaculik's novel How to Make a Boy is a highly personal account of fatherhood; while Jachym Topol's excerpt, "A Trip to the Railway Station," offers a darkly comic look at the negative impact of consumerism. Ivan Klima and Josef Skvorecky who, (along with Bohumil Hrabal) are the writers best known to American readers in the anthology, both weigh in with pieces which avoid the self-indulgence and obvious allegory that mar much of the volume. Klima's piece, about a writer under constant surveillance who is briefly reunited with an old love, is the collection's strongest.

Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Czech

Product Details

• Paperback: 4 pages
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail (June 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1852423781
• ISBN-13: 978-1852423780
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,161,401 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #79 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Slavic

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A mixed bag of faded magic realism and inspired tale-telling, August 29, 2003

By 

John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: This Side of Reality: Modern Czech Short Stories (Modern Short Stories) (Paperback)

The best story in this anthology by far is by the youngest author, "A Trip to the Raliway Station," by Jachym Topol. I recommend his novel "City Sister Silver." In Joycean, demotic, slangy, and debased registers, he manages in his story excerpted here to capture post-1989 Prague while avoiding the imitative Kafkaesque allegory that clogs so much of his earlier, pre-Glasnost compatriots' stories in this volume. Klima's "Tuesday Morning: A Sentimental Tale" from his superb "My Merry Mornings" collection and Skvorecky's droll "The Well-Screened Lizette" both highlight the intricacies of love and sexual politics in the Communist era. Ladislav Fuks' "Kchony Sees the World" and Arnost Lustig's "The River Where the Milky Way Flows" strive to examine the Shoah from an adolescent's oblique viewpoint; Ewald Muller's brief nightmare "Swallowed by Earth" in turn conveys the mood of partisans and refugees during the war forcefully. Ota Pavel's "Cafe Slavia" excerpt and Berkova's "Lousehead" excerpt manage less successfully but still ambitiously to capture some of the manic air of Stalinism and hero worship.

The other selections make me wonder if editors feel compelled to include all of their long-neglected authorial friends in these anthologies. When so many writers have admittedly suffered under totalitarianism and have been limited to samizdat clandestine exposure for decades, it sounds mean to begrudge them a wider audience. And many may not have had the luxury of being enriched by what Western readers could for forty years of the post-WW2 years. I don't mean to patronize, but the rest of the volume does not stand up to the selections I've noted. Topol's novel that followed this anthology, however, confirms him as the first major post-1989 figure in Czech fiction, and I hope that others will follow his formidable but dazzling path soon.