Rake, drunkard, aesthete, gossip, raconteur extraordinaire: the narrator of Bohumil Hrabal's rambling, rambunctious masterpiece Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age is all these and more. Speaking to a group of sunbathing women who remind him of lovers
Wales is gloriously united, while England is torn in two by bloody strife. Llewelyn seizes the opportunity to force recognition of his title and right as Prince of Wales, refusing to be deflected from his goal, even by the tragic deaths of his mother and
Llewelyn's burning vision is of one Wales, united against the threat of the English. But before he can achieve his dream, he must first tackle enemies nearer home. All three of his brothers hamper his efforts to create an independent state. The best-loved
In these letters written to April Gifford between 1989 and 1991 but never sent, Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) chronicles the momentous events of those years as seen, more often than not, from the windows of his favorite pubs. In his palavering style that has
Inspired by “Mrs. Tolstoy and Mrs. Dostoevsky, whose biographies about their husbands have now been published in Prague,” Bohumil Hrabal decided to produce his own autobiographical work, ostensibly fiction, from his wife’s point of view. He would w
In 1892, at the height of his prodigious powers, Anton Dvorak was persuaded to leave his native Bohemia to come to New York to be director of the National Conservatory for Music. This splendid novel tells the story of Dvorak's utterly requited love affair
A trilogy of novels set in twelfth-century England and Wales--The Heaven Tree, The Green Branch, and The Scarlet Seed--chronicles the adventures of master stone carver Harry Talvace; Ralf Isambard, Lord of Parfois; and their two sons.Set on the volatile,
The Engineer of Human Souls is a labyrinthine comic novel that investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, a Czech immigrant to Canada. As the novel begins, he is a professor of American literature at a college in Toronto. Out of touch
Josef Skvorecky, internationally acclaimed for his rich prose and expansive vision, spins a beguiling comical tale of army life under foreign occupation. The Republic of Whores takes place on an army base in rural Czechoslovakia, where the draftees of the
