The opening up of the Prague Spring in the mid-1960s set off one of the great literary explosions of this century, led by such writers as Milan Kundera, Vaclav Havel, Bohumil Hrabal, Josef Skvorecky, Vladimir Paral, and Ivan Klima. No other small language has been better represented in English.
But what has been happening since the Velvet Revolution of 1989? And who are the writers who are hoping to replace the Prague Spring generation?
Are the Czechs looking back or forward, inside or abroad, shallow or deep? Is there a new Czech style, a new sense or humor, new themes, new complaints? Are Czech women coming to the fore at last? In short, what's the story?
Daylight in Nightclub Inferno is Catbird's attempt to give at least a good part of the story. It is the first English-language collection of stories and novel excerpts by the best and most representative younger Czech writers. You will discover that, unlike the older generation, they have not been disillusioned; their darkness comes not from the disappointment of hopes, but from never having had any. The daylight in the title refers to the quality of the writers' work and to the fact that they can now publish it freely, even if it is harder to get the attention of readers faced with so many new alternatives. This collection also introduces a new generation of American Czech-into-English translators. And it contains a few bonus selections from excellent members of the older generation who somehow were passed over.
$15.95 paper, 320 pp., ISBN 0-945774-33-8.
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Excerpt from Daylight in Nightclub Inferno
"I don't know what to do," she finally said. "My husband is a citizen of an unknown city. He has never told me about it, though we've been living together for twenty-six years. He has never admitted it to me, not even in the most intimate moments, and I have never asked. But I keep finding traces of the other city in the corners of the apartment and in the depths of the furniture: statuettes of gods with willful expressions; gadgets shaped like birds and turtles, which buzz from time to time and flash the red bulbs set in their eyes; books printed in an unknown alphabet, with luminous illustrations in rainbow colors depicting temples in a virgin forest, and tigers. When my husband goes out at night, I know he is going to some dark festival. I know nothing about his city. Is it a labyrinth of gold-paneled burrows, an endless palace stretching out through the hidden spaces between apartments, a circle of yurts springing up in the plain at night, or a collective hallucination? I don't even know whether my husband is a king or a servant in his city; but I think he probably has an important position, because several times I've found copies of the other city's newspapers with his photograph in them. I have never been to the other city, although I feel it's nearby, within an arm's reach, behind the wall."
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