A great collection of seven stories, in which a narrator who seems like the same person (if under varied guises--none of whom smoke!) tells of his encounters against those who buy into the system of secularism, deceit, and denial of the ethical. Whether witnessing an old man watching his wife die in an impersonal hospital, mulling over a fellow worker who claims to have seen a Marian apparition, selling carp to Christmas shoppers, helping a neighbor's child who has literally dropped into his apartment, meeting an old flame returned from affluent exile, listening to a professor who sees phallic symbols rearing rampant in the urban landscape, or boating with religious fanatics, Klima deftly captures the flow of moments that accentuate the survival of the sensitive and the idealistic holdouts who refuse to give in to the system. Even the rants he describes avoid stereotype, and the subtle criticism of the dissident permeates these vignettes in a well-crafted, undogmatic, and moving manner. Although George Theiner (not as photographer but as translator) gives Klima's voice a bit too much of a working-class British inflection, the English version succeeds in its colloquial, unforced fluency. This is what post-1968 Prague must have been like, you think. Far from the Charles Bridge and the Stare Mesto. Grim suburbs, bulldozed fields, damp mattresses, endless queues. Worth remembering today, and to learn from how the Stalinist experiment warped all those under its control.

Hats Off to Klima, this is a wonderful book - satire at the highest level. I am really surprised that Klima had the guts to write this is a communist Czeck (then communist). I do not remember anybody other than Capek who was as brilliant. The translation by George Theiner is also great. Though there are seven stories, one for each day of the week but I promise you will finish it in a couple of days. He brings up the dark side but not in a gloomy way but rather in hilarious fashion mixed with sarcasm which definitely deserves all praises. I will definitely recommend this book as a must buy.

First of all, I can't recomment Mr. Klima's works highly enough. "My merry mornings" is the first one I came across, and I have since read most of his other (translated) works. Most strongly appealing are his wry understanding of the characters he draws; his ability to mine the emotional depths of even day-to-day situations; and his almost understated depiction of life in the shadow of an east bloc regime.

I wanted a photographic memorium to remind me of my wonderful trip to Prague; the best compilation I found was this book. True, the text is in German, but that just means that I'll probably never know what the introduction means. The book truly is 95% photos. This is a beautiful compilation. The only thing I wish there were more of are outdoor photographs. There are many indoor photos of the old buildings, etc. - oddly enough, most of them containing clocks. Granted, an entire photography book could be compiled of this alone - however I would have loved a few more outdoor shots to remind me of the beautiful landscape of this riverfront medieval city. All in all, a beautiful and heartfelt study of the city through photographic imagery.

This wonderful short work by prominent Czech author Ivan Klima could do much to provide insights and understanding into the heart of Prague: the Czech people-- their history, what they've seen and who they've become. If you haven't read any Klima, this collection of essays is a fine place to start.

Essay, A Rather Unconventional Childhood: "...I remember every detail of the day when I stood by the razed prison fence, which I had once understood I would never be allowed to cross, and watched as endless columns of Red Army soldiers, tired horses, exhausted people, dirty tanks, cars and cannon, all filed by, and for the first time I saw a portrait of Marshal Stalin, a man whose face I long afterwards associated with that moment, and I sobbed uncontrollably at the knowledge that I was free. As I watched, a German civilian was beaten to death, and a tank ran over a prisoner who too greedily flung himself on a pack of cigarettes someone had tossed on the ground, but none of this could spoil my mood..."

Essay, The Powerful and the Powerless: "The strength of the powerful never (or almost never) derives from some higher mandate, or from spiritual values, or because they had a corner on truth or wisdom, though the powerful may have tried to claim this. It comes only from a preponderance of strength. The strength is then generally based on the number of souls dominated, on the power of their weapons and on their ability to organize...

The author explores literature, journalism and trends among other things. But it is not a textbook. It is pure art.

I luckily stumbled over Klima's books while living in Berlin, from where I made frequent trips to Prague. If you have ever visited Eastern Europe you will find some special enjoyment in reading this powerful novel.

Everything about this book compells you to read it until your head hurts. Then read it again, lend it to your friends and then demand it back to read again. The dialogue is obessive, compulsive and passionate and throws you into the worlds off the two main characters. You will swirl when they swirl and dive when they dive. This is one book I have re-read just to try and understand "how does the author manage that"! Brilliant, buy it.

War with the Newts is a good book not only for its intellectual value but also for enjoyment. The plot is interesting and easily captivating. In an age where exploitation in its many forms (politically, racially, environmentally, etc.) is still prevalent, the books stands as a strong satire to the possible, if not far off, consequences of society's actions. As the satire builds and the newts gain control, the book becomes more interesting, especially in a realistic sense with its constant explanatory footnotes and articles from such established periodicals as National Geographic. The final chapter is noteworthy, as Capek reveals his consciousness of the reader and his/her possible reactions to the brief (some would say sudden) ending. An easy and entertaining read, War with the Newts is defintely worth reading. (Personal note: About time, Mr. Rutstein.)

Capeks understanding of human stupidity and the evils that follow it is unmatched in my opinion. Yet the tone in his work is overwelmingly charming and outrageously funny. He is also my favorite writer,and in The war with the newts his genius is evident on every page.He tells the story in a highly entertaining way.Instead of having one or two main Characters hapek jumps between all kinds of different people from the most variyng walks of life, and through the the mirror of their experiences the reader sees the reflected Grand Worldspanning plot. A wonderfull book. Read it. It makes you feel good.

...and this is also the genesis of science fiction as a medium for social commentary. Long before Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, and Douglas Adams mined science fiction for dark pearls of wisdom, Karel Capek set the stage with the delightful "War with the Newts." A long-time favorite of mine ever since I studied it in a literature class in college, I enjoy revisiting this book time and time again. Capek effectively uses a time-line approach to document the exploitation of the "newts," all the while poking fun at (then-current) Aryan superiority, rascism, and "bonehead" science. The assumption of the inferiority of certain classes of people is shown by Capek to inevitably lead to the downfall of the world as we know it. Since Capek's time, other authors have followed his path with some success, but Capek remains the master of this genre, and, along with H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Jules Verne (oft-imitated authors in their own right), he must be considered one of the pioneers of modern science fiction

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!).

It's unfortunate that Klima's brilliance is translated so poorly in this edition. I wish I could read the original Czech version. But the novel was engaging and contained good insight about human relationships. Portions were greatly worded, and had a well-constructed plot. But at times the author lapses into tedious unnecessary narrative. Overall a good read and a nice introduction to the genre.

Ivan Klima is an astonishing man. His writings are usually fabulous. Being a Terezinstadt survivor, a Samizdat writer and distributor, his history is the material of a life larger than fiction. Perhaps that is why I found this book so disappointing. It is a nice, long read, but in the end, I found myself rather unconnected to the characters, and tired of the drum-beating of the intimacy concept... weary of the book. The resulting effect was, for me as a reader, a great distacing and lack of intimacy with the characters, and the novel itself. This makes the title rather ironic. The novel was very sterile, the characters were unappealing and hard to feel anything for. I don't know if I liked or disliked any of them enough to muster up sufficient passion to say anything powerful about the book, except that I was glad it was over. I should have probably stuck with Klima's earlier works, or the likes of Bohumil Hrabal and Josef Skorecky. Some Czech critics say that older Samizdat writers like Klima can get away with writing anything these days, on the weight of their name/history alone. I think this book is proof of that.

THis was the first book by Ivan Klima that I read and based on the back cover description I picked it with a little doubt--will it be one of those haughty books that try to explain the meaning of life, love and faith in a language that nobody can understand or care to. But it was not.

The novel is about a married pastor who falls in love with a married woman. Tormented by the deception he lives in, contrary to everything he has preached and believed in, he begins to question everything around him--his relationship with his family, his wife, his dead parents.

Through the eyes and words of the pastor, his wife and kids, his lover and her husband and other characters in the book, the reader is forced to think about some major issues: What is love? Are we always looking for an excuse to justify our not always perfect judgements? How do you adjust in a time when moral values in a society change (the novel takes place in the early nineties, when the Czech republic is on its painful way to recovery from communism and rediscovering itself)?

Yet, Klima manages to discuss all these issues and more in a very palpable way, without turning his book into a philosophical treaty. The characters of Dan (the pastor), Hana (his wife), Bara (the lover) and Samuel (the lover's domineering husband) are very well developed and portrayed with all their insecurities, doubts, emotions and loyalties.

A slow murky nerrative that builds to a anti-climax for the anti-hero. The atmosphere is like prague on qualudes. Raises questions on responsibilities and embracing social change. After reading Bohemial Hrable, Klima is like being coverd in crude oil.

Klima tells an interesting tale of a TV news cameraman, who must adjust to the Velvet revolution. I'm interested that his son says the author wasn't a great father, because the main character wishes he was a father. But he wishes many things.

This novel explores the events before and after the Velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia through the experiences of a photographer. Under Communist rule, he was forced to take artless phtotgraphs for news agencies but had always dreamed of being able to pursue his art and make great films. After the revolution, he may have his chance.

The novel works both as the story of a single man's life and in exploring more generally how Czech society after Communism did and did not live of to the dreams of freedom that its citizens had. There is a safety in unattainable dreams that is no longer there once they are realizable. (Think _The Iceman Cometh_.)

Judge on Trial caught my eye because it promised to deliver an interesting exposition of the political situation in Czechoslovakia prior to the 1968 revolution and how that impacts the choices the main character makes. I thought the book was alternately interesting and tedious. The underlying themes of moral dilemmas in the face of political repression were interesting but not explored in an as accessible manner as I had hoped. The domestic situation of the judge was very interesting, but ultimately unsatisfactorilly resolved. Ultimately I did not find the main character compelling as he seemed to distance himself from everything including responsibility for his own actions at times. The novel ended very darkly and while I would recommend this as an interesting book from the standpoint of learning more about East European politics, the story was not as compelling as I initially thought.

One of the features of Czech writing that is most evident in any genre -- from Havel's plays and letters, to Kundera's novels, and to Dubcinski's autobiography -- is the burden placed on the Czech character to weigh political expediency with moral imperatives. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Klima's masterful novel of a judge who, given the choice of trying a case in a kangaroo court or resigning in something more terrible than disgrace, decides instead to resist these choices by using the case as a way of filtering his past through the lense of his uncertainties about the facts of the case before him. Klima weaves the story of the case -- a man gases two people to death -- with that of the judge's own life of surviving childhood illness, World War II, and the moral opprobriums of post-1968 Czechoslovakia. What comes of this experience is a dual biography of the same person: on one hand a judge who has had to compromise his own sense of justice for the sake of his career, and on the other, a man whose every compromise seals his fate to tragic mediocrity. It is as if the lessons of his childhood have sentenced him to know only the memory of heroism. Distributed underground for years in Czechoslovakia by Klima's admirers, the novel was published after the opening of the east. Its sense that every decision (even the decision of what to remember and add to the judge's own self-incrimination) strengthens the idea that of the people of Eastern Europe, the Czech are among those who truly understand the weight and consequences of memory.

Klima writes beautifully, but I found the book to convoluted to give it a higher rating. I think he tried to squeeze too many themes and sub-plots into one book, and also that the narrator takes too long to resolve his inner turmoil about his extra-marital relationship. But the book is nonetheless worth reading for the prose, which is exemplary. This is not a book to read in small chunks on trains and planes, and should be tackled under perfect reading conditions.

Throughout much of the last thirty years some of the finest literary fiction has emerged from Eastern Europe. Much of this was due to Philip Roth's championing of the work of Kundera and other Czech writers. Klima is less well known than his former compatriot, but is a more interesting writer.

This novel is charming, a discourse on life, love, censorship, totalitarianism, and Kafka. The tale of an academic forced to give up his academic career to turn to street sweeping, the central character walks through Prague cleaning, and we find ourselves accompanying him. An engaging humane character wins over the reader, and although this novel is slow to start the conversational style slowly engrossed this reader at least.

Klima's work will not satisfy those looking for an easy read. But if you are prepared to be challenged then persevere. I, and many friends, have grown to love it.

But if you enjoyed this novel try one of his early books of short stories, My First Loves, or an overlooked masterpiece of Polish fiction, Tadeusz Konwicki's A Minor Apocalypse.

personally, I'll take it... this is a book that's going to stick in my head for a long while... perhaps a bit hard to get started but with so many little scenes and images that... well, like I mentioned, it's going to stick in my head for a long while...