Josef Škvorecký Libri

Da una valigia che si socchiude cadendo baluginano i riflessi di un sax basso quasi irreale. Un ragazzo guarda: è incantato e si unisce ai grotteschi personaggi di una bruegeliana orchestra di musica leggera che appresta per quella sera un concerto in città. Con le sue note insinuanti, il sax basso diventa senza difficoltà l’immagine stessa di un contromondo: dove si può respirare, dove il suono è piacere e improvvisazione, dove non è naturale essere schiavi. Questa del sax basso è la seconda delle due «leggende» che compongono il libro, forse il più felice e immediato nella complessa opera di Škvorecký. Sono due storie dove il jazz – quale appariva, in tutta la sua proibita fascinosità, in Cecoslovacchia sia durante l’oppressione nazista sia sotto l’occupazione comunista – è il protagonista stesso, l’anima mercuriale che attraversa i sentimenti e le angosce con un invincibile guizzo. I racconti La leggenda Emöke e Il sax basso, che compongono questo libro, sono apparsi per la prima volta fra il 1963 e il 1967.

This collection of author Josef Skvorecky's essays, reviews and interviews includes deeply personal stories about the people and events that have shaped his beliefs and his writing. Included are his views on the nature of art, politics, freedom, writers and film-makers.

Girls, jazz, politics, the golden dreams and black comedy of youth--these are the compelling ingredients of The Cowards. May 1945, a small town in Czechoslovakia.  The Germans are withdrawing.  The Red Army is advancing.  And Danny Smiricky is being forced to grow up fast.  Observing with contempt the antics of the town's citizens playing it safe, he adopts the role first of reluctant conscript, then of dashing partisan. The Cowards is the story of an uncomplicated, talented youth caught up in momentous historic events who refuses to be bored to death by politics--or to lie down and die without a fight. --

A work on contemporary Czechoslovak cinematography focusing on the celebrated director Jiri Menzel's classic film "Closely Watched Train" in the context of communist Czechoslovak mores and restrictions.

The Engineer of Human Souls is a labyrinthine comic novel that investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, a Czech immigrant to Canada. As the novel begins, he is a professor of American literature at a college in Toronto. Out of touch with his young students, and hounded by the Czech secret police, Danny is let loose to roam between past and present, adopting whatever identity that he chooses or has been imposed upon him by History. As adventuresome, episodic, bawdy, comic, and literary as any novel written in the past twenty-five years, The Engineer of Human Souls is worthy of the subtitle Skvorecky gave it: "An Entertainment on the Old Themes of Life, Women, Fate, Dreams, The Working Class, Secret Agents, Love and Death."

Set in Czechoslovakia amidst the ruthless background of political repression, this memoir and ten companion tales tell of romance, subversion and artistic hunger, and of a regime that cast a terrifying shadow on some of the brightest hearts and minds of post-war Europe.

Karl Leden works in the State publishing house in Prague. His work becomes complicated by the arrival of the Lenka Silver, and the reproaches of his ex-girlfriend, Vera. When a murder occurs, there are plenty of suspects - but the event is most definitely linked to Miss Silver's past.

Six tales which trace the libidinous ardours of a young man in wartime Czechoslovakia. His fantasies obstinately refuse to become reality, and in a world of unyielding girls and ruthless Nazi invaders, jazz is his only solace. By the author of "The Bass Saxophone" and "The Engineer of Human Souls".

Smiricky, from "The Engineer of Human Souls", is a witness to an event, which the Catholic townspeople insist is a miracle, but the Communist Party denounces as a fraud. A priest dies under interrogation. Twenty years later the case is reopened and Danny is drawn into the investigations.