Překlady českých autorů

Contents: *Prince Bayaya *The Firebird and the clever vixen *Mahulena, the beautiful maiden *Sternberg *About a magic napkin, hat and shoes

"How I Came to Know Fish (1974)" is Ota Pavel's magical memoir of his childhood in Czechoslovakia. Fishing with his father and his Uncle Prosek - the two finest fishermen in the world - he takes a peaceful pleasure from the rivers and ponds of his country. But when the Nazis invade, his father and two older brothers are sent to concentration camps and Pavel must steal their confiscated fish back from under the noses of the SS to feed his family. With tales of his father's battle to provide for his family both in wealthy freedom and in terrifying persecution, this is one boy's passionate and affecting tale of life, love and fishing.

Prague has been one of the most significant towns of the European Judaism for many centuries. Apart from the Old-New Synagogue, the Pinklas Synagogue, the Old Jewish Cemetery and the Jewish Town Hall, there are the stories, myths and legends of the old, mysteriuos ghetto. The stories about the wise Rabbi Loew, the Golem and wealthy Mordecai Maisel aloow us to visualize the long lost world of the Jewish Prague.

An inspiration to writers such as Orwell and Vonnegut, this is one of the great anti-utopian satires of the twentieth century and is now regarded as a modern classic. Man discovers a species of giant, intelligent newts and learns to exploit them so successfully that they gain enough skills and arms to challenge man's place at the top of the animal kingdom.

A budding poet and his adoring mother are the central characters of this intriguing early novel by Milan Kundera. He takes us through the young man's fantasies and love affairs in a characteristic tour de force, alive with wit, eroticism and ideas.

Slavný humoristický román Zdeňka Jirotky vyšel poprvé v roce 1942 a od té doby se dočkal 15 vydání v českém jazyce. Po více než 60 letech se s Jirotkovým románem budou moci seznámit i čtenáři hovořící anglicky. Knihu doprovázejí originální barevné ilustrace Adolfa Borna.

The Joke, Milan Kundera's first novel, gained him a huge following in his own country and launched his worldwide literary reputation. In his foreword Kundera explains why this completely revised translation is the definitive edition of his work.

'It is impossible to do justice here to the subtleties, comedy and wisdom of this very beautiful novel. The author of The Joke is clearly one of the best to be found anywhere.' Salman Rushdie, Observer

Klima, a celebrated jazz trumpeter, receives a phone call announcing that a young nurse with whom he spent a brief night at a fertility spa is pregnant. She has decided he is the father and so begins a comedy which, during five madcap days, unfolds with ever-increasing speed.

Discover "perhaps the funniest novel ever written" (The Guardian ), now beautifully reissued

"The classic comic novel of the First World War." --The New Yorker - "A literary masterpiece." --New York Review of Books - "One of the greatest works of 20th century literature." --Boston Globe

Sparkling with comic genius and narrative exuberance, "I Served the King of England" is a story of how the unbelievable came true. Its remarkable hero, Ditie, is a hotel waiter who rises to become a millionaire and then loses it all again against the backdrop of events in Prague from the German invasion to the victory of Communism. Ditie's fantastic journey intertwines the political and the personal in a narrative that both enlightens and entertains.

The story of Milos Hrma, a gauche young Candide of the occupied countries, apprentice in a small railway station in Bohemia who, before meeting his heroic death, loses his burdensome innocence, masters the social complexities of the small world he inhabits, and discovers his manhood.