My golden trades
by Ivan Klima
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Description
One of the last artistic expressions of life under communism, this novel captures the atmosphere in Prague between 1983 and 1987, where a dance could be broken up by the secret police, a traffic offence could lead to surveillance and where contraband books were the currency of the underworld.Tags
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Member Reviews
As much an environmental treatise as protest literature, not to suggest that ecological causes aren't within the purview of protestation. Anyway, I enjoyed these poignant musings from a kindred soul.
Interesting about the last years of Czech communism. A bit floating for my liking, but still a good read.
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ThingScore 75
It is part of Mr. Klima's undoubted skill as a writer (again one is reminded of Chekhov) to resist absolutely the kind of intellectual fireworks in which Mr. Kundera specializes. His writer's stance is that of the plain man doing a plain job, or trade, even if it is one that the state apparatus has arbitrarily found for him. The stories suggest that he has become a writer not by having a show more vocation but by finding himself writing: a humble do-it-yourself activity that can keep you sane in a mad world, especially a mad political world. Ironically, the state has inadvertently shown him how to behave like Voltaire's Candide, and to cultivate his garden. show less
added by SnootyBaronet
Author Information
50+ Works 2,111 Members
Author and playwright Ivan Klima was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1931. In 1968, he acted as an editor for the journal of the Czech Writer's Union. Following that, he was briefly a professor at the University of Michigan before returning to his homeland in 1970. His works, which include The Spirit of Prague, a collection of essays, were show more banned in Czechoslovakia until 1989. They address issues such as totalitarianism and intellectual freedom, which Klima also lectures on. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- My golden trades
- Original publication date
- 1992
- Blurbers
- Angier, Carole; Dibdin, Michael; Wullschlager, Jackie; Robson, David; Kellaway, Kate
Classifications
- Genres
- General Fiction, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 891.8 — Literature & rhetoric Asian Literature East Indo-European and Celtic literatures West and South Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Slovene, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, and Macedonian)
- LCC
- PG5039.21 .L5 .Z4713 — Language and Literature Slavic languages and literatures. Baltic languages. Albanian language Slavic. Baltic. Albanian Slavic Czech
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 147
- Popularity
- 221,998
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- 5 — Czech, English, Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian, Swedish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 7
