Michael Henry Heim Knihy

Developed by Professor Michael Heim (UCLA), the text contains grammar, extensive model sentences, and exercises (Part 1) and a series of review lessons (Part 2). Vocabulary and sentences are recorded along with a selection of exercises. Czech-English, English-Czech glossaries are provided. This intermediate course is particularly helpful for those who have a command of Russian. text. Product no. AFCZ10D

This is the first novel by the author of Immortality, which won The Independent Award for Foreign Fiction in 1991. Milan Kundera is also the author of The Book of Laughter and Fogetting.

This parable of censorship and the modern state centers on Hanta, a trash collector whose habit of salvaging and reading discarded books has brought him both the richness of the classics and the ridicule of his boss

Attempting to go beyond the cliche of Prague as the golden city , this book brings out all its mystery, ambiguity, gloom, lethargy and hidden fascination. More than a literary and cultural history of Prague, this book seeks to be both a celebration and requiem for an oppressed culture.

Set in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, the story revolves around a young doctor who has a way with women and an aversion to politics. He suddenly finds himself caught up in his country's political turmoil and in a crisis of commitment with the women in his life.

The pieces collected in Lend Me Your Character—the novella "Steffie Cvek in the Jaws of Life" and a collection of short stories entitled Life Is a Fairy Tale— solidify Dubravka Ugresic's reputation as one of Eastern Europe's most playful and inventive writers. From the story of Steffie Cvek, a harassed and vulnerable typist whose life is shaped entirely by clichés as she searches relentlessly for an elusive romantic love in a narrative punctuated by threadbare advice from women's magazines and constructed like a sewing pattern, to "The Kharms Case," one of Ugresic's funniest stories ever about the strained relationship between a persistent translator and an unresponsive publisher, the pieces in this collection are always smart and endlessly entertaining.

'This book is a novel in the form of variations. The various parts follow each other like the various stages of a voyage leading into the interior of a theme, the interior of a thought, the interior of a single, unique situation the understanding of which recedes from my sight into the distance. It is a book about laughter and about forgetting, about forgetting and about Prague, about Prague and about the angels.' The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the most secret of Kundera's novels. This new translation is the first to be fully authorized by Milan Kundera. 'An urgent, stunning book; it teaches us that when we die, what we lose is not the future but the past. I think of Kundera as the great modern descendant of Gogol and Kafka.' Carlos Fuentes

Najznámejšia novela Thomasa Manna zachytáva vznik a vývin pustošivého, bezvýchodiskového citu, ktorý uzatvára smrť, nakoniec predstavujúca vykúpenie. Sám autor ju charakterizoval ako „príbeh o rozkoši zo zániku“. Úspešný starnúci spisovateľ Gustav von Aschenbach sa nečakane rozhodne stráviť leto v Benátkach. Ubytuje sa na Lide, kde jeho pozornosť upúta krásny poľský chlapec Tadzio. Keď v meste vypukne epidémia cholery, Aschenbach zvažuje odchod, no jeho fascinácia chlapcom je silnejšia než pud sebazáchovy, a tak kvôli Tadziovi ostáva. V deň Tadziovho odchodu Aschenbach zomiera, pozorujúc na pláži objekt svojej trýznivej lásky.

This ebullient, gallivanting novel encapsulates the world vision of the Czech Republic's best-loved author in one tumbling, breathtaking sentence. Saints and sinners, emperors and embezzlers, barmaids and balalaikas all play their part in the bawdy reminiscences of Hrabal's cobbler as he charms an audience of young beauties.

Nerudovy povídky jsou dnes již považované za klasickou literaturu. Jednoduché příběhy s brilantní pointou, mistrně prokreslené postavy lidí dobrých i zlých, zápletky a situace, které píše sám život - to je dílo spisovatele, jehož odkaz nestárne. Kniha je jedinečná autorovým hlubokým pochopením pro nelehký osud drobných figurek svérázné pražské čtvrti, v níž Neruda dlouhá léta žil a jejíž neopakovatelnou atmosféru vykreslil s nebývalou přesvědčivostí.