| Everyday Spooks Contributor(s): Michal, Karel (Author), Short, David (Translator) |
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ISBN: 8024614944 ISBN-13: 9788024614946 Publisher: Karolinum Press, Charles University OUR PRICE: $22.50 Product Type: Hardcover Published: September 2008 Annotation: A collection of seven short stories about wierd and fantastic creatures that inhabit the strange world of everyday reality in 50's and 60's communist Czechoslovakia. Following the best tradition of Czech humouristic and satiric fiction, as well as the magic, obscure and grotesque literary visions of Prague, represented mainly by Kafka's works, Karel Michal desribes, with keen and intelligent humour, fantastic encounters, where the past melts into the present, where ordinary people meet both comic and anxious figures and ghosts and where everyday speech turns into an absurd dialog. Two stories from the book [How Pimple Struck Lucky, The Cockabogey] have been filmed and Karel Michal has become well-known as an imaginative critic of "socialist reality." The book is illustrated by Dagmar Hamsikova. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.3" W x 7.1" (0.90 lbs) 226 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Prague-born Karel Michal (1932-84) lived a significant part of his adult life under Czechoslovakia's oppressive communist regime. Prevented from studying at the university as a young man, he fruitlessly cycled through a number of professions before finally turning to writing in the early 1960s. Michal's works--which include detective fiction, historical novels, short stories, and screenplays--offer a Kafkaesque perspective on the mechanism of the absurd and argue for substantial reinterpretation of the concept of ordinary life under a totalitarian regime. With Everyday Spooks, Michal presents an unforgettable assortment of fantastic creatures that inhabit his strange vision of everyday reality in '50s and '60s communist Czechoslovakia. Translated from the Czech by David Short and complemented with suitably eerie illustrations by Dagmar Hams kov , this collection of seven short stories describes bizarre encounters where the past melts into the present, ordinary people meet comic and anxious figures and interact with ghosts, and mundane speech drifts repeatedly into absurdity. |
Contributor Bio(s): Short, David: - A retired teacher of Czech and Slovak, David Short has increasingly worked as a translator. He is the author of a popular Czech textbook, coauthor of a number of publications in the field of linguistics, and the translator of a score or so of books from Czech. |