MR. KAFKA, New Directions

Written mostly in the 1950s by Czech master Bohumil Hrabal at the height of his powers. The stories capture a time when Czech Stalinists were turning society upside down, inflicting their social and political experiments on mostly unwilling subjects. These stories are set variously in the gas-lit streets of post-war Prague and on the raucous and dangerous factory floor of the famous Poldi steelworks where Hrabal himself once worked. Hrabal captures men and women trapped in an eerily beautiful nightmare.