Short stories
Šavle meče
Not translated into English
Ladislav Dvořák · 1979
Synopsis
Stories, for the most part in the first person, in which a narrator with autobiographical traits moves through the years after 1948 among those whom the regime has cast out to the margins. He escapes the marriage plans of a landlady and her daughter, appears before a purge commission at the faculty; at his side, the strange Doktor Dochtor tries to save books destined for pulping, or works with him at the factory.
Context
The stories first appeared in samizdat: a first set, Jak skákat panáka, in 1975, then Šavle meče in Ludvík Vaculík's Petlice edition in 1979. The complete collection, which brings the two together, circulated in the Expedice edition in 1983, the year of the author's death, appeared in exile in Purley in 1986, then in Prague in 1998 in his complete prose works. The cycle, composed from the early seventies, never reached a definitive form.
Who it is for
Eleven stories in two parts, followed by an appendix in verse; a grotesque irony in which the anecdote takes on meaning. No French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the major prose work of its author; studied in the critical collection Český Parnas, devoted to the literature of 1970 to 1990.