Vladislav Vančura

Markéta Lazarová

Rozmarné léto

Adopting a cinematic approach to draw the reader into the action, to witness it as if it were happening right before one's eyes, Vancura's novel incorporates elements of his poetist affinities from a decade earlier and deserves its place among the classics of interwar modernism.

Marketa Lazarová

Pekař Jan Marhoul

Obrazy z dějin národa českého – Díl I. až III. (všechny díly)

“The terrible bow was drawn taut. Men had let their powers be taken captive and had become the stooges of governments, they had become drinkers of the blood that fuelled their rage, they had become angels of evil, devils who spilled blood like water. A raven with shreds of corpses still stuck to its claws was perched on their shoulder and yet they saw nothing and understood nothing. The orders of platoon commanders were their reasoning and a ghastly rough and tumble was their home, each such home perishing piecemeal as bayonets made mincemeat of arms rising to take aim. Death was a day that had no dusk and horrors became the wont of armies.” Ploughshares into Swords is an expressionist anti-war novel in which Vančura tells the story of the denizens of the Ouhrov estate in language as baroque as the manor that ties them all together. The fragmented narrative introduces the reader to such characters as the Baron Danowitz, his sons, his French concubine, the farmhand František Horá, and the half-wit murderer Řeka in the autumn of 1913, before revealing their fates during the First World War. Spanning an area that stretches from the peaceful farmlands of Bohemia to the battlefields of Galicia, taking in the pubs of Budapest and the hospitals of Cracow, the novel constitutes an unsentimental and naturalistic approach to the war that created Czechoslovakia through a conscious subversion of the prophet Isaiah’s injunction that nations should beat their swords into ploughshares. Ploughshares into Swords is a stunning novel by one of Czech literature’s most important writers. This modernist masterpiece, akin to the work of Isaac Babel and William Faulkner, is now available in English for the very first time.

Ploughshares into Swords

román

Konec starých časů

Dílo Vladislava Vanc̆ury: Luk Královny Dorotky

povídky

Luk královny Dorotky

Obrazy z dějin národa českého I.

Obrazy z dějin národa českého II.

Amazonský proud ; Pekař Jan Marhoul ; Pole orná a válečná ; Poslední soud

Markéta Lazarová : Četba pro žáky zákl. a stř. škol

Kosmas

František Pavlíček

František Vláčil

(5. vydání)

Marketa Lazarova

Russian

První prózy a první pokusy

Vladislav Vancura's Summer of Caprice is commonly considered untranslatable. The playful style of the narrative, the level of language mastering and also the development of the metatextual context of the last 80 years together form this unmistakable classic of Czech literature. Looking from this perspective our English edition is an experiment, thanks to the translation by Mark Corner on one side which inevitably - as every other translation - is an interpretation, and the original illustrations by Jiri Grus and the typography by Zdenek Ziegler on the other side. However, it is an experiment aiming to present an understanding of Czech spirit, humour and way of life.

Summer of Caprice

Vladislav Vančura

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