Señor Kafka

Unpublished in Spanish, these stories were written mainly in the 1950s and present Czech master Bohumil Hrabal in full swing. They capture a time when Czech Stalinists were revolutionizing society, inflicting their social and political experiments. We are placed in the gas-lit streets of post-war Prague; on the raucous and dangerous factory floor of the famous Poldi steelworks, where Hrabal himself once worked; in a cacophonous open-air dance hall where classical and popular music go hand in hand; in the basement studio where a crazed artist attempts to create a national icon; on the scaffolding around a decommissioned church. Hrabal portrays men and women trapped in a hauntingly beautiful nightmare, longing for a world where "humor and metaphysical escape can reign".