Vladimír Páral is the author of twenty-one novels, two of which – Catapult and The Four Sonyas – have previously appeared in English translation, to great acclaim. He has been the most popular Czech literary novelist in his home country from the late 1960s until today. He lives in Marianské lázne, the spa town better known to us as Marienbad, but spent most of his adult life in Ústí nad Labem, the northwestern Czech town where his novels take place.
LOVERS & MURDERERS Translated by Craig Cravens. Another darkly humorous novel about what people will do to each other to make their dreams come horribly true. "When Vladimír Páral burst upon the Czech literary scene in the mid-1960s … he became almost overnight one of the country's most discussed writers and has since then achieved a considerable reputation abroad. … [His novels] are like whirlwinds, with fragments of real life spinning around in what eventually emerge as meticulously organized patterns. … the novel provides perhaps the best insight so far into the particular socialist variant of the universal rat-race, and it can be enjoyed even by someone who does not share the author's evident conviction that the world is definitely not heading towards a glorious future. … it is sad to think that Mr. Páral's message may remain unheeded and unread outside his own country." —Times Literary Supplement (review of Czech original)
$27 hardcover, 409 pp., ISBN 0-945774-52-4.
CATAPULT Translated by William Harkins. This twist on the Don Juan story looks at the attractions and difficulties of freedom. "Páral masterfully switches from farce to drama and back again, so that in the end we feel Jost's dilemma even as we're laughing at him." —New York Times Book Review
$10.95 paper, 240 pp., ISBN 0-945774-17-6.
THE FOUR SONYAS.Translated by William Harkins. "The ways in which The Four Sonyas . . . conceals its larger meaning just beneath the surface of the narration is wonderful to behold." —New York Newsday
$22.95 cloth, 391 pp., ISBN 0-945774-15-X.
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