Příběh inženýra lidských duší – Škvorecký Josef (2020)

In his latest fictional autobiography, Škvorecký offers an entertaining "Entertainment on old themes about life, women, fate, dreaming, the working class, informers, love, and death." He wrote it with a humorous perspective and self-irony in the timelessness of exile, as if in a kaleidoscope of absurd mini-stories from his youth in the Protectorate and from struggling under Stalinism – which intertwine with comical debates at expatriate gatherings in Canada and Škvorecký's academic struggles with "children from the prairie who 'understand reading but not literature'" – he found a peculiar significance and meaning. Refugees – victims of the regime, patriots and emigrants seeking better lives, as well as careerists and frightened visitors and informers from Husák's era evoke nostalgic memories for the author of past loves and troubles. The absurdity of the fates recounted is underscored by dialogues in the East Bohemian dialect and in expatriate Czenglish. Despite all the comedy, the novel reveals a sadness over the fate of cowards caught in the trap of a totalitarian regime and over the complete misunderstanding of the Czech experience under Canadian skies, where the first ominous shoots of political correctness are already sprouting. "Why are you telling this?" asks a Canadian literature student. "For the joy, grief, and sadness of life and death, Irena." The Anglo-Saxons, however...