Gottschalk - Hatto – Bondy Egon (2018)

The prose Gottschalk (1988), which, along with the attached stories Kratés and Jao Li, forms a loose historical-allegorical trilogy, was the last fictional text that Bondy published in samizdat, while the "novel in letters" with elements of a "road novel" Hatto was already written and published only after 1989. Both titular prose pieces are set in the "dark Middle Ages," a time of hopelessness and uncertainty. Their protagonists are spiritual beings who try to confront the world on their own, fleeing from it and returning to it again. In these texts – as well as in Kratés and Jao Li, which take place in ancient Greece and ancient China – the author utilizes historical realities, but at their core, these prose pieces are allegorical representations of the time when they were written, namely the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. At the same time, they are cryptic self-portraits, just like most of Bondy's prose works. All the prose included in this volume is published in book form for the second time, but for the first time together and in a textually revised form, which is the result of the editor's work with the manuscripts and previous, including samizdat, editions.