The book is excellent, but his masterpiece (which is well known in Eastern Europe) is the "One Minute Stories"

Istvan (Stephen) Orkeny is one of Central Europe's unknown delights. No one since Kafka has had the capacity to write the Absurd as well as Orkeny. Bordering the line between realistically feasible and realistically impossible, his stories are a must read for anyone interested in the writing of an extremely short story or dense and short novel. A must read for anyone attempting to understand Hungarian cultural viewpoints.

A shame that Amazon does not have his most important work, "One Minute Stories", published in an English version by Corvina Publishers, Budapest, but these two short novels are superb in and of themselves.

-- Orkeny's greatest admirer

I think this book is absolutely FABULOUS!! Everyone should read it

This is an interesting collection of essays, interviews, and commentaries, which has been well put together by Susan Sontag. The advice to young writers section is particularly amusing as are Kis's thoughts on his self-chosen exile. I recommend reading the Tomb of Boris Davidovitch before hand because much of the book deals with the controversy Kis faced over that novel, as well as his break from the Belgrade literati.

Kis was a brilliant writer, but as these essays show, completely apolitical. He did not have time for nationalists, internationalists, communists, capitalists any of it, which is why perhaps he went to France to live the quiet life of a University Professor.

Considering that she claims to be a friend of Kis and actually put this work together, it is shameful that Sontag insists on putting a political spin on this collection. She actually claims that the 'gingerbread heart of nationalism' section ranks along with, she claims, Andric's Letter from 1920 as early warnings against Serbian Nationalism. As someone who has translated Andric's story, I can tell you that Ms. Sontag should consider re-reading. The Andric story makes the case that Bosnia is a land of ethnic hatred, ready to explode at anytime, which it obviously did. There is no mention of Serbian aggression or nationalism. Nor does Kis ever pay tribute to any idealized multi-cultural Bosnia, Sontag's cause celebre throughtout the early 90's and repeated in the introduction. Enough politics, however.

Read this work because it tells us a great deal about a wonderful literary stylist, who knew and loved literature. The fact that others would try to co-opt Kis to champion their political philosophies is embarrassing. The book speaks for itself.

Kis is a giant of world literature. This book of biographical pieces, interviews, and essays by Kis allow the reader to see some of the inner workings of that fine mind. His early death was a great loss to literature. What he has achieved, however, will live on forever. I've read A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH perhaps five times, and I'm looking forward to reading it again, and again.

I read Danilo Kis' books " Tomb for Boris Davidovich", "Hourglass" and "Encyclopedia of the Dead". The glory and greatness of this eastern European writer can be comprehended fully only after understanding Kis on the personal level. ""Homo Poeticus" does just that: writer pours his soul to the world by revealing his influences (literary and personal), - and brings reader closer to the great writers of this century such as: Nabokov, Flaubert, Borges, Marquis de Sade...Kis even wrote an essay on the Serbian painter Velickovic. I always respected Danilo Kis' fictional works. Collection of Danilo Kis' essays and interviews made me even more fond of him as a person - and his work. Book's editor, Ms. Susan Sontag, wrote emotionally powerful introduction. Her selection of the work published on this non-fiction masterpiece is absolutely wonderful.

I really enjoyed reading this book. For me Prague is an amazing and beautiful place. Reading this book makes me feel like I'm right back in the city again. I also like the fact that the book is fairly upbeat and easy to read. I definitely recommend reading this book over a Pivo in a Pivovar in Mala Stana.

I am a great fan of Czech literature, and eagerly awaited the arrival of my copy of Prague Tales (just six months after returning from Prague myself).

When I got my copy, there were eight blank pages in the range of 140-155. That is to say, eight pages of text were omitted, not that my book had extra blank pages thrown in.

The publisher should be notified. Check your copy carefully. It is a real pity, as this is considered one of the best books to come out of the Czech Republic. I'll get my next copy in a book store where I can Czech it out (sorry, couldn't resist!).

"For thirty-five years now I've been in wastepaper, and it's my love story." The narrator of Too Loud a Solitude expounds on his philosophy of life, of knowledge of books in this beautifully written and deeply rich and ironic book. He begins each chapter with a purposeful repetition, reminding us that he has been hard at work for 35 years, and this is his whole life. Although the book meanders without much plot, the metaphors put to work here are things of beauty, despite the fact that we are reading it in translation. "...When I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence in my mouth and suck at it like a fruit drop..." The juxtaposition of art rotting among garbage is clear and prevalent throughout the book.

Hrabal's narrator spins brief vignettes about events in his life, "portrait of the artist as an old mushroom face", always coming back to the idea of heaven. "Neither the heavens are humane nor is life above or below-- or within me." Or, "The heavens are not humane, but I'd forgotten compassion and love." Or better still, as the narrator begins to feel the hopeless feeling of technology and progress encroaching on his insular world, as books were destroyed vigorously, indifferently, thoughtlessly, "The heavens may be far from humane, but I'd had about all I could take." The new automated hydraulic wastepaper compactors had filled him with a shock; there was nothing human left in their work. No one stopped to savor the content of the waste. He realized it was the death knell not only for smaller compactors but to his way of life.

He describes how he received his education from these books unwittingly over the 35 years he has worked in this job, committing what he calls "crimes against books". But it was in this way that he came to see the beauty of destruction.

"How much more beautiful it must have been in the days when the only place a thought could make its mark was the human brain and anybody wanting to squelch ideas had to compact human heads, but even that wouldn't have helped because real thoughts come from outside and travel with us like the noodle soup we take to work; in other words, INQUISITORS BURN BOOKS IN VAIN. If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh..."

"It never ceased to amaze me, until suddenly one day I felt beautiful and holy for having had the courage to hold on to my sanity after all I'd seen and been through, body and soul, in too loud a solitude, and slowly I came to the realization that my work was hurtling me headlong into an infinite field of omnipotence."

I have just finished reading Bohumil Hrabal's Too Loud a Solitude and am reeling from its intoxicating effect. This book is not for everyone - there is no real "plot," and readers expecting a traditional narrative style will be bewildered and disappointed. But those readers who are sensitive to the beauty of language and wonderful thoughts will adore this book. It is pure poetry, lyricism, and philosophy. This is an incredible book, and I can't wait to read it again. And again, and again...

Simply brilliant! Hrabal's story is a stunning piece of work told through the eyes of one of the most interesting charactors in literature. I have read the short novel at least once a year for philosophic ispiration and to take joy in the love of books, like the main charactor. When I finish I am left in wonder at how the western world has overlooked Hrabal for so long. What a poetic and marvelous book!

This book isn't great, but it could be a lot better if cut to, say, 50 pages (from 281, plus 40 pages of footnotes.) Ripellino is a modern pedant who floods his disjointed essay with adjectives, metaphors and literary quotes; not necessarily a bad thing, but not good when endlessly rehashing the same idea. The idea is that Prague is a melancholic, Kafkaesque city haunted by the ghosts of 4 centuries of disasters. There're fragments of (heavily interpreted) history, quantities of literary allusions, and perverse descriptions of eccentric art and science, but its all so poorly organized and repetitive that it makes for a bore of a book.

'Magic', for Ripellino, means atmosphere; he has NO sympathy for occultism and to him Prague's Golden Age, the late Renaissance period, is a period of fools (Rudolf II and other alchemically-minded aristocrats), swindlers (Edward Kelley and all other alchemists), quacks (John Dee and other mystics), and knaves (Rudolf's ministers.) Half the book is spent archly ridiculing the period and its passions.

In Part Two Ripellino paints an equally grim picture of the period from Rudolf II's abdication in 1612 to, oh, sometime around 1946. But it's still all bits and pieces. We get a gloomy look at a few historical figures, some poets and writers, maybe an artist or two.

Kafka is the dominant spirit of Ripellino's Prague and what he gives us is a dismal, victimized city. There are no maps or pictures (except for 4 on the hardback's book jacket.) This suits the essay, which is more about Ripellino's mental image of Prague than of a physical locale.

I tried to read this before my trip to Prague and found it inaccessible and its language pretentious. Then, after a week in the city, I started reading again. And couldn't stop. It is only when you visit the Jewish cemetery or Prague Castle that the myths, ghosts and executioners of the past come alive. Although a tough read, it is exceptionally rewarding for the traveller who wants to take more home from Prague than just Bohemian crystal.

The late Mr. Ripellino has amassed a tribute to Prague like no other. It breathes. Anyone that has ever visited the "Golden City of a 100 spires" must have had an inkling deep in their soul of what the author has magnificently put down in words. The "Old Crone [Prague] has claws", as Kafka put it, and Ripellino shows exactly why that is so. The research that went into this book is simply astounding, with my edition having 44 pages of tightly spaced notes, of 333 pages total, including index. The book takes us from one extraordinary Prague tale to another, with myth, legend and reality all melting into one pot of magic. Anyone that plans to visit the center of Europe should read this book in advance, or at least skim it on the plane. It is a tough read, being full of poetic phrases and meticulous details, which often beg for multiple readings. However, the time spent is well worth it. The book will serve as a beautiful bridge between the soul and the mind, as the traveler wanders along the cobblestones of thousand year old "Praha." p.s. I bought my edition (Picador) in Prague for 315 Kcs, or about US$ 9. The price on the back of the paperback is 9.99 British Pounds, which is about US$ 17, depending on the day.

This book had been so built up by other people who had read it that I expected more. The writing is uneven and the first two thirds of the book seem to have almost no relation to the last third.
The first two thirds of the book gave a few interesting details of life in Russia just before the Revolution, but other than that I foundit very uninteresting. It is not until alomst the end of the book that the element of cocaine is even introduced and when it is the book quickly winds to its unsurprising end.

Having already been a fan of Dostoevsky & Tolstoy, it was Charles Bukowski who pointed me back to the Russians as being the only producers of literature that's worth reading. "A Novel with Cocaine" is a fine example of a novel that has something worthwhile on its pages.

Might we say that it's existentialist in it thinking? The individual caught in a universe that really doesn't give a damn about the individual... and the individual's struggle to find something to do, and a place to fit.

Camus and Sartre are puny little runts compared to Ageyev! Ageyev gives us the moment-to-moment REAL stuff that actually matters. One character goes up in front of his high school math classs to work out a problem... he sneezes and boogers are hanging out of his face while the class laughs. How does he deal with this?

Ageyev keeps his work as something regular folks can identify with. Not all of his situations deal with boogers (or things just as gross), but they're all common enough to keep a reader's interest without drawing the reader into pompous brain-teasers that few of us can access.

Conversely, Camus and Sartre take us into a high-minded realm which is interesting, but when will I ever have to think about whether or not to kill a wheelchair-bound guy because he doesn't have the nerve to do it himself? How many of our lives are impacted by such decisions?

Ageyev is much more interesting. He's a great writer. He's got a great sense of humor and he's FIRMLY rooted in common existence.

Though the book is titled "A Novel with Cocaine," sure there's a great deal about the main characters travels through the underworld of drugs and drug people and the activities between them. But, I think that this is more of a way for the writer to access his more interesting ideas--as opposed to writing a book that's really about cocaine.

Losing his "nasal virginity" in an adventure into the wonders and horrors of cocaine addiction, the central character finds his answer to insecurity and social ineptitude in a potent white powder as his peer in The Overcoat seeks the same comfort in a dark, tattered garment.

If the pseudonym doesn't give it away, this anonymous author provides another dim glance into nineteenth century St. Petersberg that seems a brushstroke within the same portrait alongside those by Gogol and Dostoevsky. Imagine the Underground Man not tormenting his maid, but out in the streets snorting cocaine, searching for a female companion.

Novel with Cocaine is not essential reading, but it is another worthwhile glimpse at the literary products of desperate and dark nineteenth century St. Petersberg. Glorification of drug use is a problem in the late twentieth century. Novel with Cocaine will force you to think again with grave reluctance that neither McInerney nor Ellis have been able to posit in the minds of their readers.

No doubt Kundera's most famous book,_Unbearable_'s fame seems more derived from its subject than its form. The novel more overtly deals with erotic/romantic love than many of Kundera's other works, a great commerical sell, but fails to convincingly stamp out a more transcendental meaning. Sure the amazing Kundera-esque insights abound, but they are somehow are unable to overcome a certain levity and at times frivolity, like old-wives tales that go in one ear and out the other. Perhaps this was Kundera's attempt to justify and invoke the title of the novel, but no matter how witty, it leaves the reader feeling at times patronized. To me Kundera's gift lies not in his ability to manipulate words, but as a writer who both seeks and is able to evoke tremendous understanding and empathy from his readers. This intent is more explicit in his best work,_The Book of Laughter and Forgetting_, which I highly recommend along with "The Hitchhiker's Game" in the short story volume _Laughable Loves_. But nonetheless read the novel before seeing the movie, which in all honesty, you could do without.

With this book Kundera describes the life of a young surgeon living in communist Tjecho-Slovakia and his relationships. During the course of the story the protagonist is constantly searching for something that will give weight(meaning) to his life. He does this by having lots of relations with women. In this his social status in in constant decline. His non-compliance with the communist regime finally gets him demoted to window-cleaner and farm-hand. It is here where he finally finds an uncomplicated women who can give meaning (weight).

The storyline is constructed as a framework for remarkable philosophical observations.

Kundera takes his reader to strange, unconventional places with these observations. His views on life are sometimes disturbing, sometimes funny but always fascinating and these observations add enormous to the impact of the story.

These observations are the gems in the book, Kundera shows most of himself in these sections. His ideas are highly original and I enjoyed them very much. Read this book, it is a great work of art.

I read this book a few years ago when what was happening in my life at that time made me think about the nature of romantic love, the nature of affection, and the nature of emotions in general. Reading this book gave me a vocabulary to express the things that had been crystallizing in my mind. What I concluded was that emotions are essentially 'light' (not in the sense of being trivial but in the sense of being fleeting, body-based and not amenable to concepts such as morality) and by their very nature, any discourse that assumes any permanence is irrelevent while talking or thinking about them. This was a huge discovery and it significantly changed my world view. I further concluded that to be happy one needs to keep in mind this essential 'lightness' of things. But of course, the 'lightness' is 'unbearable', by our very nature we are susceptible to 'vertigo' (another Kundera concept - I don't remember if he talks about it in this book or one of his later books) - a need to define things, make them solid, make them heavy. It is this paradox that defines most of the human experience. The experience of reading this book too is an essentially 'light' experience and very enjoyable.

Unless you speak Russian, tear out everything but the first chapter and the appendices, and call it an "abridged" language reference. The first few pages give the best, most concise explanation of grammatical cases I've ever seen. In less than an hour an average student will understand that which professors/teachers spend months trying to get across to English-speaking students. Then the author immediately jumps into lengthy comparisons of differences between Russian and Czech, leaving beginning students dizzy from "extraneous information overload." As a result, the wonderful appendices may be overlooked in the haste to find an easier second language.

Like the first chapter, the Appendices are very concise, as grammatical tables ought to be. My fellow students and I actually spent hours copying them onto poster-sized paper for the wall, and miniaturizing them for laminated pocket references. As the model words for the "declensions", or "cases" (see Chapter 1), the author actually used the SAME model words that Czech students learned in grammar school. I can't explain how much of a help that is! (The only improvement I can suggest for the tables, would be for the author to label what each word is the model for. For example: "kniha - hard feminine", "hrdina - masculine animate ending in 'a'", etc.")

The first few pages and the last few pages became dog-eared and worn, while everything in the middle is still virgin white. Buy it, "abridge" it, and use it in conjunction with a different book.

This book serves as an excelent reference for learners of Czech -- far better than any book you'd run into in your average book store. It has been my staple and savior for years of learning and using Czech, and I still depend upon it for reference. The russian examples, as mentioned by a previous reviewer, are extensive. This is excellent for a slavophile such as myself, coming to Czech after studying Russian. The book does not rely upon them entirely for explanation, however, leaving its usefullness unscathed should the reader have no prior familiarity with slavic languages. My only cause for disappointment is the exercises, which I found to be entirely insufficient. If you won't be practicing Czech frequently otherwise, look elsewhere for a workbook, but keep this one as your grammar bible!

The last person to review this book was not satisfied due to the large amount of Russian examples in the book. I think the evaluation is quite critical and in my opinion, quite wrong. The book covers czech. It occasionally mentions a russian example for those who have a knowledge of that language. It is particularly useful because there are grammatical topics in czech which look like russian but are not used as often as in russian speech or writing(compare czech mozne vs. russian mojno). There are also examples that point to similar attributes between the two languages. As the author states in the preface, it is not necessary to know russian to use this book succesfully. In fact, every concept that uses russian, also has an explanation without the use of russian. The russian examples are merely side notes which can be useful to those with a knowledge of russian, but are by no means essential. In fact one can flip by many pages on which no russian examples are present. In all, this is a first rate book. I recommend it to anyone with or without a knowledge of russian.

This book explores the narrator's mother's death - the second half being narrated by the dead mother. Interspered between the narrative segments are quotations from a wide variety of literary sources. In the narrative segments, especially those of the mother, dreams and "reality" are intertwined. The book deserves multiple readings to fully appreciate its content but is certainly enjoyable as a single read.

Note: since there is no description of the book this is translated from Hungarian and is part of a larger work.

A novel of one sentence, even a 20,000-word one? Although I can occasionally detect the sensibility that produced the masterpieces _I Served the King of England_ and _Closely Watched Trains_, I found this boring and a major rip-off. Perhaps if there had been some introduction I would feel less hostile.

Along with _Too Long a Solitude_ it shows that even a book too short to be a book can seem interminable.

This was a brief and unique book. I picked it up after reading I Served the King of England, and though I would not necessarily recommend this book, I thought its style was commendable. There were approximately 100 pages in this book, all rambling chatter without any stopping points or punctuation. If you can tolerate such a thing, go ahead and read it. Otherwise, well, pass it up.

Imagine you are a young girl and an old man is standing on a ladder by a tree and picking cherries. He starts telling you events from his and his ancestors lives, and he won't stop for the next 2 or 3 hours. (This is the time you will need to read that book.) It is incredible how he switches from one topic to the next in an unpredictable way, but nevertheless this book is a single speech. It is written in ONE sentence. OK, Hrabal uses question and exclamation marks from time to time, but these do not really end a sentence, no, it goes on and on... Hrabal shows, that he has learned from James Joyce, this book is very much influenced by Joyces' streams of consciousness, but it is much more easy to read because of the bizarre humour of this old man on the tree. Read this book, and teach your mind how to dance...