No Saints or Angels
by Ivan Klima
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Description
A novel of one desperate woman's hopes and desires set in contemporary Prague from "a literary gem who is too little appreciated in the West" (The Boston Globe).Divorced, approaching fifty, and mother to a rebellious fifteen-year-old, Kristyna is beginning to feel the strain of her bleak existence--until she finds a new sense of joy when she begins a love affair with a man fifteen years her juniorBut her escape into romance is far from complete. She worries about her daughter Jana, who has show more been cutting school, and may be using heroin--the latest plague on the city. And Kristyna's mother has forced her to accept the personal papers of her dead father, a tyrant whose Stalinist ideals she despised. At a crossroads in her life, she must find a way to put the past behind her and deal with the challenges of the present in a Czechoslovakia that is still trying to overcome years of communist oppression.In this Washington Post Best Book of 2001, Klima "unflinchingly presents the problems facing modern Prague and civilization in general... [and] fills it with mercy" (San Francisco Chronicle). show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Kristyna is a 42 year old divorced dentist in Prague whose life has been shaped by the holocaust and how it affected her parents, both individually and generationally. "In a world where enormous shower rooms are built just to poison people, life can never be the same again."
She has an ex-husband dying of cancer and a manipulative teenage daughter on hard drugs, although it takes her way too long to figure that out. She also has trust issues when it comes to men.
This is an introspective novel that ponders the effect of evil on the generations that follow.
She has an ex-husband dying of cancer and a manipulative teenage daughter on hard drugs, although it takes her way too long to figure that out. She also has trust issues when it comes to men.
This is an introspective novel that ponders the effect of evil on the generations that follow.
Takes place in Prague and centers on a divorced Mom and her teenage daughter. Real slice of life that gathers momentum over time. Makes the reader appreciate the small things in life.
My wife bought this one in London, read it and passed it graciously to me for the trip home.
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Author Information
50+ Works 2,119 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
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Geen heiligen, geen engelen
- Original title
- Ani svati, ani andélé
- Original publication date
- 1999
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- General Fiction, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 813 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English
- LCC
- PG5039.21 .L5 .A8413 — Language and Literature Slavic languages and literatures. Baltic languages. Albanian language Slavic. Baltic. Albanian Slavic Czech
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 137
- Popularity
- 238,576
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.68)
- Languages
- 6 — Czech, Dutch, English, Hungarian, Portuguese, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 10
- ASINs
- 1
