Zápisky z dob pokroku – Hlach Jan (2021)

If the author dared to paraphrase one of our greatest short story writers, he would probably call this collection of tales Stories from All Pockets. After all, one of the stories is pulled from the pocket of oil-stained shorts of an eleven-year-old boy, whose cruel times took away his parents and the beautiful childhood he had been living until then for many years. Another was hidden in the pocket of homemade jeans, sewn by a neighbor for a trained teenager, paid for by a father who had just returned from prison. The book also contains a story concealed in the pocket of the first dark suit, in which an eighteen-year-old young man struggled to pass his maturity exam at evening high school, facing great difficulties caused by an unfavorable background check. For two years, the hero of our tale carried five stories in the pockets of a diesel-soaked uniform of a driver in auxiliary technical battalions, shortly known as PTP, where his commander, Captain Vasil, addressed all subordinate soldiers, and not just them, not as comrades, but as 'fucking guys.' And if we turned one of the last pockets inside out, we would surely find a dog tag from 2005 and a sprig of alpine edelweiss. The common denominator of all these was that, apart from the stories, there wasn't much else left in them. They were times that were rich mainly in their youth.…