Mr. Kafka: And Other Tales from the Time of the Cult

Mr. Kafka: And Other Tales from the Time of the Cult PDF Author: Bohumil Hrabal
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811224813
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 105

Get Book Here

Book Description
Wonderful stories of Communist Prague by “the masterly Bohumil Hrabal” (The New Yorker) Never before published in English, the stories in Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult were written mostly in the 1950s and present the Czech master Bohumil Hrabal at the height of his powers. The stories capture a time when Czech Stalinists were turning society upside down, inflicting their social and political experiments on mostly unwilling subjects. These stories are set variously in the gas-lit streets of post-war Prague; on the raucous and dangerous factory floor of the famous Poldi steelworks where Hrabal himself once worked; in a cacophonous open-air dance hall where classical and popular music come to blows; at the basement studio where a crazed artist attempts to fashion a national icon; on the scaffolding around a decommissioned church. Hrabal captures men and women trapped in an eerily beautiful nightmare, longing for a world where “humor and metaphysical escape can reign supreme.”

Mr. Kafka: And Other Tales from the Time of the Cult

Mr. Kafka: And Other Tales from the Time of the Cult PDF Author: Bohumil Hrabal
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811224813
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 105

Get Book Here

Book Description
Wonderful stories of Communist Prague by “the masterly Bohumil Hrabal” (The New Yorker) Never before published in English, the stories in Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult were written mostly in the 1950s and present the Czech master Bohumil Hrabal at the height of his powers. The stories capture a time when Czech Stalinists were turning society upside down, inflicting their social and political experiments on mostly unwilling subjects. These stories are set variously in the gas-lit streets of post-war Prague; on the raucous and dangerous factory floor of the famous Poldi steelworks where Hrabal himself once worked; in a cacophonous open-air dance hall where classical and popular music come to blows; at the basement studio where a crazed artist attempts to fashion a national icon; on the scaffolding around a decommissioned church. Hrabal captures men and women trapped in an eerily beautiful nightmare, longing for a world where “humor and metaphysical escape can reign supreme.”

All My Cats

All My Cats PDF Author: Bohumil Hrabal
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811228967
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 93

Get Book Here

Book Description
A literary master’s story about the aggravations and great joys of cats, from “a most sophisticated novelist, with a gusting humor and a hushed tenderness of detail” (Julian Barnes) In the autumn of 1965, flush with the unexpected success of his first published books, the Czech author Bohumil Hrabal bought a cottage in Kersko. From then until his death in 1997, he divided his time between Prague and his country retreat, where he wrote and tended to a community of feral cats. Over the years, his relationship to cats grew deeper and more complex, becoming a measure of the pressures, both private and public, that impinged on his life as a writer. All My Cats, written in 1983 after a serious car accident, is a confessional memoir, the chronicle of an author who becomes overwhelmed. As he is driven to the brink of madness by the dilemmas created by his indulgent love for the animals, there are episodes of intense brutality as he controls the feline population. Yet in the end, All My Cats is a book about Hrabal’s relationship to nature, about the unlikely sources of redemption that come to him unbidden, like a gift from the cosmos—and about love.

Mr Kafka and Other Tales

Mr Kafka and Other Tales PDF Author: Bohumil Hrabal
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1784871176
Category : Czechoslovakia
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Get Book Here

Book Description
Enter the gas-lit streets of post-war Prague, the steelworks run by singed men, the covered market that smells of new-born babes, the cacophonous open-air dance hall. Mr Kafka is avoiding his landladyâe(tm)s blueberry wine breath, a stonemason witnesses the destruction of a monument to Stalin he risked his life to build, and factory men strain to catch a glimpse of a beautiful bathing murderess. In these newly discovered stories, Hrabal captures men and women in an eerily beautiful nightmare and their spirit in all its misery and splendour.

I Served the King of England

I Served the King of England PDF Author: Bohumil Hrabal
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811216876
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
Chronicles the experiences of Ditie, who rises from busboy to hotel owner in World War II Prague, and whose life is shaped by the fate of his country before, during, and after the conflict.

Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult

Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult PDF Author: Bohumil Hrabal
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780811224802
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Wonderful stories of Communist Prague by "the masterly Bohumil Hrabal" (The New Yorker)

After the Quake

After the Quake PDF Author: Haruki Murakami
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307424642
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Get Book Here

Book Description
Set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, the mesmerizing stories in After the Quake are as haunting as dreams and as potent as oracles. An electronics salesman who has been deserted by his wife agrees to deliver an enigmatic package— and is rewarded with a glimpse of his true nature. A man who views himself as the son of God pursues a stranger who may be his human father. A mild-mannered collection agent receives a visit from a giant talking frog who enlists his help in saving Tokyo from destruction. The six stories in this collection come from the deep and mysterious place where the human meets the inhuman—and are further proof that Murakami is one of the most visionary writers at work today.

Monsieur Pain

Monsieur Pain PDF Author: Roberto Bolaño
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811218899
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 135

Get Book Here

Book Description
Roberto Bolano takes us into an odd, dark, but comic underworld in this strangely tender noir novel. A Bolano classic. The Peruvian poet César Vallejo is in the hospital, afflicted with an undiagnosed illness and unable to stop hiccuping. His wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud: the mesmerist Pierre Pain. Pain, a timid bachelor, is in love with the widow Reynaud and agrees to help. But two mysterious Spanish men follow him and bribe him not to treat Vallejo. Ravaged by guilt and anxiety, Pain does not intend to abandon his new patient, but his access to the hospital is barred and Madame Reynaud mysteriously leaves Paris. Another practitioner of the occult sciences enters the story (working for Generalissimo Franco, using his mesmeric expertise to interrogate prisoners) — as do Mme. Curie, tarot cards, an assassination, and nightmares. Meanwhile, a haunted Monsieur Pain wanders the crepuscular, rainy streets of Paris. . . .

Varamo

Varamo PDF Author: César Aira
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811219550
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 97

Get Book Here

Book Description
The surprising, magnificent story of a Panamanian government employee who, one day, after a series of troubles, writes the celebrated masterwork of modern Central American poetry. Unmistakably the work of César Aira, Varamo is about the day in the life of a hapless government employee who, after wandering around all night after being paid by the Ministry in counterfeit money, eventually writes the most celebrated masterwork of modern Central American poetry, The Song of the Virgin Boy. What is odd is that, at fifty years old, Varamo “hadn’t previously written one sole verse, nor had it ever occurred to him to write one.” Among other things, this novella is an ironic allegory of the poet’s vocation and inspiration, the subtlety of artistic genius, and our need to give literature an historic, national, psychological, and aesthetic context. But Aira goes further still — converting the ironic allegory into a formidable parody of the expectations that all narrative texts generate — by laying out the pathos of a man who between one night and the following morning is touched by genius. Once again Aira surprises us with his unclassifiable fiction: original and enjoyable, worthy of many a thoughtful chuckle, Varamo invites the reader to become an accomplice in the author’s irresistible game.

Too Loud a Solitude

Too Loud a Solitude PDF Author: Bohumil Hrabal
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547545886
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 83

Get Book Here

Book Description
A fable about the power of books and knowledge, “finely balanced between pathos and comedy,” from one of Czechoslovakia’s most popular authors (Los Angeles Times). A New York Times Notable Book Haňtá has been compacting trash for thirty-five years. Every evening, he rescues books from the jaws of his hydraulic press, carries them home, and fills his house with them. Haňtá may be an idiot, as his boss calls him, but he is an idiot with a difference—the ability to quote the Talmud, Hegel, and Lao-Tzu. In this “irresistibly eccentric romp,” the author Milan Kundera has called “our very best writer today” celebrates the power and the indestructibility of the written word (The New York Times Book Review).

Guignol's Band

Guignol's Band PDF Author: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811200189
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Guignol's Band, first published in France in 1943, Céline explores the horror of a disordered world.