{"title":"Modern Czech Classics","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the heart of Czech literature with these modern classics. Explore profound stories reflecting history, culture, and the human spirit. A rewarding journey for readers seeking depth and insight.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"summer-of-caprice-book-vladislav-vancura-9788024611952","title":"Summer of Caprice","description":"\"Summer of Caprice\", a winning comic novel first published in 1926, is a classic of Czech writing, yet it is little known elsewhere. This may be due to the complexities of the text, which is characterized by a playful narrative, an exceptional mastery of language, and a layered metatextual context that has only become richer over the decades. Mark Corner has rendered this exceptional work in an English translation that beautifully captures Vladislav Vancura's experimental style - or, as the author himself called it, \"poetism in prose.\" This translation is presented alongside the original illustrations and typography and goes a long way toward deepening our understanding of the Czech spirit, humor, and way of life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49519712370961,"sku":"GOR003241684","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/8024611953.jpg?v=1750807736"},{"product_id":"we-were-a-handful-book-karel-polacek-9788024614496","title":"We Were a Handful","description":"A favorite work of Czech humor, We Were a Handful depicts the adventures of five boys from a small Czech town through the diary of Petr Bajza, the grocer’s son. Written by Karel Poláček at the height of World War II before his deportation to Auschwitz in 1944, this book draws on the happier years of Poláček’s own childhood as inspiration. As we look upon the world through Petr’s eyes, we, too, marvel at the incomprehensible world of grownups; join in fights between gangs of neighborhood kids; and laugh at the charming language of boys, a major source of the book’s humor. This translation at last offers English-language readers the opportunity to share in Petr’s (and Poláček’s) childhood and reminds us that joy and laughter are possible even in the darkest times.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49567784141073,"sku":"GOR013750820","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49756915138833,"sku":"GOR002157102","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/8024614499.jpg?v=1751440428"},{"product_id":"saturnin-book-zdenek-jirotka-9788024606835","title":"Saturnin","description":"A novel featuring Saturnin, a 'gentleman's gentleman' who obviously owes a debt to Wodehouse's beloved Jeeves, who wages a constant battle to protect his master from romantic disaster and intrusive relatives, such as Aunt Catherine, the 'Prancing Dictionary of Slavic Proverbs'.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49590837444881,"sku":"GOR005395012","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49596598190353,"sku":"GOR002273852","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50298568376593,"sku":"CIN8024606836VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52508126282001,"sku":"CIN8024606836G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/8024606836.jpg?v=1751384705"},{"product_id":"saturnin-book-zdenek-jirotka-9788024632889","title":"Saturnin","description":"On its initial publication in Czech in 1942, Saturnin was a best seller, its gentle satire offering an unexpected if temporary reprieve from the grim reality of the German occupation. In the years since, the novel has been hailed as a classic of Czech literature, and this translation makes it available to English-language readers for the first time which is entirely appropriate, for author Zdenek Jirotka clearly modeled his light comedy on the English masters Jerome K. Jerome and P. G. Wodehouse. The novel's main character, Saturnin, a \"gentleman's gentleman\" who obviously owes a debt to Wodehouse's beloved Jeeves, wages a constant battle to protect his master from romantic disaster and intrusive relatives, such as Aunt Catherine, the \"Prancing Dictionary of Slavic Proverbs.\" Saturnin will warm the heart of any fan of literary comedy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49600751173905,"sku":"GOR011997855","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49622077931793,"sku":"GOR009040501","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51504406167825,"sku":"NIN9788024632889","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51693821624593,"sku":"CIN8024632888G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53360699310353,"sku":"GOR012182440","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/8024632888.jpg?v=1751159423"},{"product_id":"rambling-on-book-bohumil-hrabal-9788024623160","title":"Rambling On","description":"Novelist Bohumil Hrabal (1914-97) was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and spent decades working at a variety of laboring jobs before turning to writing in his late forties. From that point, he quickly made his mark on the Czech literary scene; by the time of his death he was ranked with Jaroslav Hasek, Karel Capek, and Milan Kundera as among the nation's greatest twentieth-century writers. Hrabal's fiction blends tragedy with humor and explores the anguish of intellectuals and ordinary people alike from a slightly surreal perspective. His work ranges from novels and poems to film scripts and essays. Rambling On is a collection of stories set in Hrabal's Kersko. Several of the stories were written before the 1968 Soviet invasion of Prague but had to be reworked when they were rejected by Communist censorship during the 1970s. This edition features the original, uncensored versions of those stories.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49664980353297,"sku":"GOR013511655","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49940641087761,"sku":"CIN8024623161A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52650264887569,"sku":"CIN8024623161G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":52889789563153,"sku":"CIN8024623161LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/8024623161.jpg?v=1751384706"},{"product_id":"shop-on-main-street-book-ladislav-grosman-9788024640228","title":"The Shop on Main Street","description":"Written by a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, The Shop on Main Street is the story that inspired the highly successful Academy Award–winning Czechoslovak film of the same title. Looking at the Holocaust through the eyes of a complicit individual, the narrative follows a good-natured carpenter living in a Slovak town in 1942 who unwittingly becomes a participant in a moral crisis involving the abuse and persecution of Jews. Describing the film adaptation of Ladislav Grosman’s novel, the New York Times declared that it is a “human drama that is a moving manifest of the dark dilemma that confronted all people who were caught as witnesses to Hitler's terrible crime.” The review continues: “‘Is one his brother's keeper?’ is the thundering question the situation asks, and then, ‘Are not all men brothers?’ The answer given is a grim acknowledgement. But the unfolding of the drama is simple, done in casual, homely, humorous terms—until the terrible, heartbreaking resolution of the issue at the end.”","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49666803728657,"sku":"GOR013005937","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50105902924049,"sku":"CIN8024640228G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/8024640228.jpg?v=1751159424"},{"product_id":"cremator-book-ladislav-fuks-9788024632902","title":"The Cremator","description":"\"The devil's neatest trick is to persuade us that he doesn't exist.\" Giovanni Papini It is a maxim that both rings true in our contemporary world and pervades this tragicomic novel of anxiety and evil set amid the horrors of World War II. As a gay man living in a totalitarian, patriarchal society, noted Czech writer Ladislav Fuks identified with the tragic fate of his Jewish countrymen during the Holocaust. The Cremator arises from that shared experience. Fuks presents a grotesque, dystopian world in which a dutiful father, following the strict logic of his time, liberates the souls of his loved ones by destroying their bodies first the dead, then the living. As we watch this very human character a character who never ceases to believe that he is doing good become possessed by an inhuman ideology, the evil that initially permeates the novel's atmosphere concretizes in this familiar family man. A study of the totalitarian mindset with stunning resonance for today, The Cremator is a disturbing, powerful work of literary horror.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49736692367633,"sku":"NGR9788024632902","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51064095146257,"sku":"NIN9788024632902","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51692026528017,"sku":"CIN802463290XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52983634428177,"sku":"GOR009578470","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/802463290X.jpg?v=1750968199"},{"product_id":"plowshares-into-swords-book-vladislav-vancura-9788024648149","title":"Plowshares into Swords","description":"Originally published in 1925, Plowshares into Swords is an expressionist antiwar novel in which Vladislav Vančura tells the story of the denizens of the Ouhrov estate in language as baroque as the manor that ties them all together. The fragmented narrative introduces the reader to such characters as Baron Danowitz, his sons, his French concubine, the farmhand František Hora, and the mentally disabled murderer Řeka in the autumn of 1913, before revealing their fates during World War I. Ranging from the peaceful farmlands of Bohemia to the battlefields of Galicia, taking in the pubs of Budapest and the hospitals of Krakow, the novel constitutes an unsentimental and naturalistic approach to the war that created Czechoslovakia. Plowshares into Swords is a stunning novel by one of Czech literature’s most important writers. This modernist masterpiece, reminiscent of the work of Isaac Babel and William Faulkner, is now available in English for the very first time.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49739149312273,"sku":"NGR9788024648149","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50398791237905,"sku":"CIN8024648148VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/8024648148.jpg?v=1751254442"},{"product_id":"ear-book-jan-prochzka-9788024651354","title":"Ear","description":"A paranoid thriller of life under surveillance in Soviet Czechoslovakia.     A deputy minister in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Ludvík enjoys all the luxuries that success in the party affords him, but he must be careful: he’s under no illusions about the secret police bugging his apartment. Luckily, he and his wife, Anna, know where the bug is and where they can safely converse. However, any comfort they feel disappears the evening they attend an official party, where they learn that Ludvík’s boss has just been arrested after presenting a report written by Ludvík himself. Is Ludvík next? Back home after the party, the couple must get past unresolved marital tensions to get rid of absolutely anything that could incriminate them—all while contending with the strange men outside their apartment and the bug inside.  ​  Penned under the oppressive watch of Soviet authorities in 1960s Czechoslovakia—but touching on still-current themes of surveillance and paranoia—this cinematic thriller is as tense and timely as ever. A promising Party member who became persona non grata after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, author Jan Procházka knew firsthand the gnawing terror of life in a surveillance state: after his death in 1971, the new tenants of his apartment discovered twelve hidden listening devices. As Ear makes terrifyingly clear, the most frightening horror stories are the ones closest to everyday reality.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49741508018449,"sku":"NGR9788024651354","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/8024651351.jpg?v=1751451640"},{"product_id":"tales-of-the-prague-ghetto-book-siegfried-kapper-9788024649450","title":"Tales of the Prague Ghetto","description":"A collection of nineteenth-century folklore-infused tales of Jewish life in Prague.     Trained in philosophy and medicine, the writer, translator, scholar, and political and cultural activist Siegfried Kapper (1821–1879) devoted significant effort to the advancement of Jewish culture in Bohemia, Jewish emancipation, and to the commitment of Jews to contemporary Czech society. The three stories in this collection, which first appeared in the press in the 1840s and were posthumously published as a collection at the end of the century, offer a Romantic and folkloric vision of Jewish culture in Prague.   The first story, “Genenda,” displays Kapper’s operatic eye for detail and drama with its account of a dutiful rabbi’s daughter being swept away by a dashing young man, a Christian nobleman disguised as a Jew. “The Curious Guest” is an intricate tale of a quest for wisdom and power. The final story, “Glowing Coals,” is a supernatural tale of romantic desire and revenge, displaying Kapper’s skill at deploying the tropes of folklore for dramatic literary effect. The collection not only provides a colorful snapshot of nineteenth-century Czech-Jewish culture but also resonates with universal human themes that transcend a single national experience.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49743182561553,"sku":"NGR9788024649450","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51064740839697,"sku":"NIN9788024649450","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52672777814289,"sku":"NLS9788024649450","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/8024649454.jpg?v=1750731168"},{"product_id":"transfigured-night-book-libuse-monkov-9788024651729","title":"Transfigured Night","description":"A vision of late-twentieth-century Prague from an acclaimed Czech novelist.     In late 1992, three years after the Velvet Revolution and as Czechoslovakia is about to dissolve into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, choreographer and dancer Leonora Marty, who fled the Communist state decades earlier, has returned to Prague. Having wrapped up her ballet of The Makropulos Affair, the famous dancer meets old classmates, wanders the city through crowds of tourists, and visits the most obscure and unvisited museums. When she is approached by Thomas Asperger, a descendant of ethnic Germans driven from Czechoslovakia after World War II, she must confront three relationships—her relationship with the city of her youth, her homeland’s relationship with its past, and her new romance with this German admirer.   Written in German and published in 1995, by an author whose life mirrored her protagonist’s, the novel provides a cultural tour of Prague. Employing a style as influenced by the operas of Leoš Janácek as the novels of Thomas Pynchon, Transfigured Night is a masterpiece of Czech literature, showing that the culture of this nation comes in a variety of tongues.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49745656414481,"sku":"NGR9788024651729","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50986222125329,"sku":"GOR014161075","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/8024651726.jpg?v=1751000602"},{"product_id":"why-i-write-book-bohumil-hrabal-9788024642680","title":"Why I Write?","description":"This collection of the earliest prose by one of literature's greatest stylists captures, as scholar Arnault Mar chal put it, \"the moment when Hrabal discovered the magic of writing.\" Taken from the period when Bohumil Hrabal shifted his focus from poetry to prose, these stories--many written in school notebooks, typed and read aloud to friends, or published in samizdat--often showcase raw experiments in style that would define his later works. Others intriguingly utilize forms the author would never pursue again. Featuring the first appearance of key figures from Hrabal's later writings, such as his real-life Uncle Pepin, who would become a character in his later fiction and is credited here as a coauthor of one piece, the book also contains stories that Hrabal would go on to cannibalize for some of his most famous novels. All together, Why I Write? offers readers the chance to explore this important nascent phase of Hrabal's writing.   Expertly interpreted by award-winning Hrabal translator David Short, this collection comprises some of the last remaining prose works by Hrabal to be translated into English. A treasure trove for Hrabal devotees, Why I Write? allows us to see clearly why this great prose master was, as described by Czech writer and publisher Josef Skvoreck , \"fundamentally a lyrical poet.\"","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50038080569617,"sku":"CIN8024642689G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/8024642689.jpg?v=1750838712"},{"product_id":"rambling-on-book-bohumil-hrabal-9788024632865","title":"Rambling On","description":"Novelist Bohumil Hrabal was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and he spent decades working at a variety of laboring jobs before turning to writing in his late forties. From that point, he quickly made his mark on the Czech literary scene; by the time of his death he was ranked with Jaroslav Hasek, Karel Capek, and Milan Kundera as among the nation's greatest twentieth-century writers. Hrabal's fiction blends tragedy with humor and explores the anguish of intellectuals and ordinary people alike from a slightly surreal perspective. His work ranges from novels and poems to film scripts and essays. Rambling On is a collection of stories set in Hrabal's Kersko. Several of the stories were written before the 1968 Soviet invasion of Prague but had to be reworked when they were rejected by Communist censorship during the 1970s. 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From the eighth floor of a tower block in Central Europe, Jan Zábrana surveyed the twentieth century. He had been exiled from his own life by Communism. His parents were imprisoned, their health was broken, and he was not allowed to study languages in college. Refusing both to rebel outright or to cave in, he thought of himself as a dead man walking. “To all those who keep asking me to do things for them, I sometimes feel like saying: ‘But I’m dead. I died long ago. Why do you keep treating me as if I were one of the living?’”  ​  Yet during some of Europe’s most difficult years, he wrote The Lesser Histories, a collection of sixty-four sonnets that range through themes of age, sex, and political repression—a radiant testament to his times. The lines are emptied both of personal pathos and political stridency. 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