Kdo opil Jiřího? – Honzák Radkin (2021)

Doctors' memoirs are always sought-after reading. They are usually thick books full of foreign words. A doctor-reader typically opens them and looks for mentions of themselves and, if so, how they are portrayed. Almost always, they are dissatisfied. In contrast, a patient-reader eagerly opens medical memoirs with straightforward enthusiasm, hoping to find the advice they seek, gossip about famous patients, or at least read about someone worse off than themselves. These small hopes bizarrely conceal a certain healing message. Psychiatrist Radkin Honzák (* 1939) and dentist Jiří Koťátko (* 1939) wrote their memoirs briefly and in a ping-pong style. The memory of the first evokes a different memory in the second, complementing, clarifying, and collectively advancing the narrative. The time frame of their recollections begins and ends with Josif Vissarionovich Stalin, specifically our own, Czech and granite one in Letná, Prague, famously unveiled in 1955 and subsequently shot down under the cover of darkness in 1962 after the cult of personality was dismantled. It must be emphasized that Stalin's monument is the only sad element in the book. Both authors traditionally do not hold back on humor and irony, describing their studies and early careers with a sense of perspective, and younger readers can only envy that they could not be there. So, accept the invitation from both...