Ivan Klima has a way of telling about life behind the Iron Curtain that somehow doesn't make you pity the people there. His short stories let you explore the past and another culture through the eyes of ordinary people. Klima's style is easy to read and even poetic at times. I would definetly recommend Klima to a friend.

This book shows that even the life in the "goulash communism" had some poetics in it. If you want to learn about the lands that were behind the Iron Curtain and don't feel like going through some horrors or thorough scholarly work - choose Klima.

This book is in some ways exactly what it looks like, a survey, to borrow an occupation the narrator held, of life in a police state. However, what Klima does in these connected tales is deceptively difficult. He has written in a style which remains free of ponderousness, which starts with the narrator's attitude and is reflected in the sentences and word choices.

This could not have been easy, and one can think of how pregnant each line could have been. Instead, there is a deft comic touch which helps wring events for their melancholy and, at times, frightening juices. Each story poses a problem for the narrator. As the book proceeds we are invited to watch as he fumbles for some meaning to what happens, while at the same time we know he actively resists the notion that a definite reason can be found to explain why anything happens. We float as he floats, and digress in our own thoughts when he digresses. For this reader, the book became more grave than comic with the last tale, partly due to its content, partly to the picture Klima has built up effectively.

Indeed, the comedy is quietly presented as perhaps the only way to defend oneself against the daily assaults of life under such a regime, and not a completely reliable defense at that. Therein lies the melancholy of this work, which is a good introduction to Klima's art.

One word must be said about the proofreading of the Penguin softcover edition. Perhaps that company simply purchased the text from _Granta_ and decided not to bother with checking if words were repeated needlessly, if the past tense of a word should have been supplied instead of a present, and so on. Errors like that occur much too often (and in so short a book), and are a disservice to the author and the reader.

The sextet of stories presented in this volume are all variations on the theme of work; the "golden trades" of the title represent the employment choices made by the artists of Czechoslovakia in the last decade of communism. This is indeed "mature communism" in its death throes, its last gasp, for as the narrator approaches each of his trades - archeology assistant, courier, engine driver among them - we expect to find a man beaten-down by a society; instead, the artist is triumphantly liberated through the very simplicity of his work. Klima masterfully portrays a man (perhaps himself) at relative peace with his predicament, a man who regrets the course that his country has taken but who nonetheless is able to connect with his fellow man - indeed, with the world - through his everyday jobs. There is the engine driver who blissfully rushes along in his locamotive, flying past the flat-footed police; there is the courier who travels around Prague with nothing more than a leather satchel slung over his shoulder and, in perhaps the best story, there is the surveyor's assistant who achieves an enduring sense of freedom in the lines, angles and boundaries of the countryside. Ivan Klima presents tales of a man forced by the State to wear the clothes of a trade, but a man who retains his artist's soul.

The theme of countries that were brutalized by Germany in World War II only to then face new masters in the form of The Soviet Union has been written before. Ivan Klima adds a new terrible aspect to this history that portrays those that survived as persons suffering from an even more acute pain, if that is possible. The book is unrelenting in the revelations and histories of characters both alive and dead, and while there is some hope in the novel, it is fairly gray, a deep shade of gray.

The author increases the pain his characters must deal with by making them much more than simply survivors. He burdens them with family histories that contributed either to their family's pain, or the pain of their nation. Then there is the complication of the deceptions that one-generation feels is necessary to protect the youngest in the family's line. While well intended and expeditious, invariably it is the wrong decision to make, and the negative consequences it provokes are worse than the original truth. Deception also presupposes that those being mislead are ignorant of the truth, and will remain that way, bad presumption and bad consequences.

The author also presents the consequences of lost continuity. In a macro sense the subject is war, arguably the greatest disruptor of history, and on a micro level there are the relationships, or what pass for relationships, that are either fragments of what they should be, are based on false presumptions, or wrongly credited actions.

There is a wealth of human drama that takes place in this book as the author displays the results of decisions that may be taken by one generation, resented and hated by the next, and still continue to harm the generations that follow.

In Ivan Kilma's newest piece of fiction, he once again transports us to the magical and alienating world of Prague after the Velvet Revolution of 1989. The book is not his best (see Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light, or Love and Garbage), however, it is a good introduction to the writing of this master author. His character development is profound, and his ability to narrate is forceful. The reason for four instead of five stars lies in the pessimism that dominates the book. It makes you think, but reminds you how horrible the fact that life often does not turn out as you expected.

Probably after Capek and Kundera there has not been such a matured author as Klima in the Czeck language. As for Capek , he was often afraid to protest and Kundera lived in France but Klima has stayed in the country and protested. He is brilliant but in this book you get to see the maturity. Its a mix of Klima and Cortazar. This is love mixed with wit in the time of revolution which brings out the pain of human relations. Its a story of a class being detached from the lessons of human relation while a small group tries to get it back. All the stories are great. all the stories are great.