'Well-served by his excellent translator, Gerald Turner, his beautifully constructed fictions are full of life and colour, of observation as affecting as it is precise, and of a robust sympathy for the human condition that celebrates his characters' courage in trying to seize joy from life, even as it record their failure.' The Times These previously untranslated stories span Ivan Klima's career, from exiled dissident to celebrated author, and form a personal history of Prague that is an acute and moving examination of our attempts to find freedom in love.