Czech Novelist Emil Hakl

Recently I read and enjoyed Czech writer Emil Hakl's Of Kids & Parents (published by Twisted Spoon Press) and it just so happens that Chad Post has a review of the novel over at Three Percent:

Written almost entirely in dialogue, the novel takes place over one night as a 42-year-old man and his 71-year-old father go from bar to bar drinking, talking about airplanes, about women, about everything. The book is narrated by the son, although expository sections are few and far between.

Read the entire review here.

Twisted Spoon Press

Twisted Spoon Press, based in Prague, is a great publisher of European (primarily Central and Eastern European) literature in English.

This fall, Of Kids & Parents by Emil Hakl, translated from the Czech by Marek Tomin will be published in the U.S. Hakl was born in Prague in 1958 and has published a volume of poetry, three novels, and two collections of short stories. Of Kids & Parents was awarded the Magnesia Litera Book of the Year prize in 2003 and was adapted into a feature film.

This description is from the Twisted Spoon website:

Taking its cue both from Joyce's Ulysses and Hrabal's freely associating stream of anecdote, Of Kids & Parents is about a father and son taking a walk through Prague, over the course of which, and in the pubs and bars they stop into, their personal lives are revealed as entwined with the past sixty years of upheaval in their corner of Europe. One's "small history" is shown to be inseparable from the large history played out on the world's stage: families are uprooted, relationships fail, jobs are gained or lost, and still life goes on. Hakl's genius is his ability to mesh the two into a seamless flow of dialogue.

Check out this work and their other interesting titles at the Twisted Spoon Press web site.