Překlady českých autorů

'As I crammed the cream horn voraciously into my mouth, at once I heard Francin's voice saying that no decent woman would eat a cream puff like that' In a quiet town where not much happens, Maryska, the flamboyant brewer's wife, stands out. She cuts her skirt short so that she can ride her bicycle, her golden hair flying out behind her. She butchers pigs. She drinks and eats with relish. And when the garrulous ranconteur Uncle Pepin comes to visit the locals are scandalized even further, in Bohumil Hrabal's affecting, exuberant portrayal of a small central European community between the wars. 'One of the greatest European prose writers' Philip Roth 'Hrabal combines good humour and hilarity with tenderness' Observer

Díla Ladislava Fukse bývají charakterizována jako psychologická próza zaměřená na téma úzkosti a zla v totalitních systémech. Autor je u nás i v zahraničí známý zpracováním tématu holocaustu (Spalovač mrtvol, Pan Theodor Mundstock). Myši Natálie Mooshabrové jsou prvním Fuksovým románem, ve kterém pracuje s novou tematikou a s prvky žánrů sci-fi a alegorie. Specifický humor, směs hororu i grotesky, pohádky i absurdního dramatu vytvářejí intenzivní atmosféru strachu a nejistoty, kterou umocňují bizarní protiklady hvězdoletů a koňských povozů či sofistikované byrokracie a stánků s pivo limo. Kniha byla rozpracována před okupací Československa v roce 1968, ale vydána až počátkem sedmdesátých let. První překlad díla do angli

Playful and provocative, irreverent and inspiring, Capek is perhaps the best-loved Czech writer of all time. Novelist and playwright, famed for inventing the word 'robot' in his play "RUR", Capek was a vital part of the burgeoning artistic scene of Czechoslovakia of the 1920s and 30s. But it is in his journalism - his brief, sparky and delightful columns - that Capek can be found at his most succinct, direct and appealing. This selection of Capek's writing, translated into English for the first time, contains his essential ideas. The pieces are animated by his passion for the ordinary and the everyday - from laundry to toothache, from cats to cleaning windows - his love of language, his lyrical observations of the world and above all his humanism, his belief in people. His letters to h

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing -- though absurdly comic -- meditation on human feelings of inadequecy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the mosst widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.

Slowness was Milan Kundera's first novel written in French. Disconcerted and enchanted, the reader follows him through a midsummer's night in which two tales of seduction, separated in time by more than two hundred years, interweave and oscillate between the sublime and ridiculous. As Kundera's readers would expect, Slowness is at the same time a formidable display of existential analysis. Slowness (and rapidity), discretion (and exhibitionism) are the principal concepts, and those which are to the reader like vital keys for understanding life in our contemporary world.

The Gardener's Year is a timeless classic of wit and wisdom, sure to capture the heart and imagination of every gardener--indeed, everyone who has pursued any hobby with a passion that occasionally overrides good common sense. Originally published more than fifty years ago in Czechoslovakia, it transcends the years with grace and ease. Fifty-eight sprightly drawings by the author's brother, Josef Capek, lend themselves perfectly to the artful simplicity and humor of this book