Příšerná hostina - Strach, hrůza a šíle – Kopáč Radim (2023)

This book is structured somewhat like a polemic. Horror in Czech literature has never been confined solely to the genre of prose and the time frame of the late 18th and early 21st centuries, as is commonly believed and evidenced by numerous book publications. Irrational fears and anxieties, horrors, and other borderline states have, of course, been with us from the very beginning: in song, in poetry, in legend and morality tale, later in newspaper reports; in both high and low literature, from Mácha and Erben to anonymous urban folklore, in medieval descriptions of the torture of an unfortunate maiden, and in brief references to a Spartakiad murderer or a murderous woman with a truck; simply across the vast fields of fiction and non-fiction from the oldest monuments of Czech literature to the present day. The book gathers over a hundred texts of various natures and artistic, hence aesthetic qualities, and is thus, in the best sense of the word, a quodlibet. Although it certainly does not contain everything, everyone can read according to their liking. To extract their own unique horror from its pages. To emphasize fear, mystery, horror, or madness, as one prefers.