677 - Afghánistán – Bondy Egon (2021)

Prozy 677 (1977) and Afghanistan (1980) share a similar literary strategy: the reflection of the immediate present, the time when these texts were created, is intertwined with utopian or dystopian visions of a fictional apocalyptic future and evocations of times of civilizational decline in the past. Both texts are rich in the realities of the Charter 77 community and the cultural underground in Czechoslovakia at the end of the 1970s, among which one can also discern a number of stylized portraits of the author's contemporaries (e.g., poets I. M. Jirous, Fanda Pánek, critic Jan Lopatka, pastor Miroslav Mevald, psychiatrist Stanislav Drvota) and find very specific mentions of several other personalities, as well as identify the central autobiographical character of the "poet" or refugee "C.", which connects these prose works with Invalid Siblings (1974), where the author hides in the character of the disabled pensioner and philosopher "A.". 677 is published here in its second edition and Afghanistan, set in September 1980, shortly after the entry of Soviet troops into the country, in its third book edition.