The Good Soldier Švejk is one of the most famous and popular characters not only in Czech but also in world literature. This is evidenced by the fact that, along with numerous editions at home and abroad, the work has become a classic in the true sense of the word, which is constantly read and quoted. Perhaps we could also talk about a part of our national character, whether in a good or...

František Antonín Count Kostka of Kostka is a descendant of a noble family living in New York. After the fall of the communist regime, he returns to Bohemia with his American wife Vivien and daughter Marie (III.) to take over the family seat. In addition to the castle, the count's family ‘inherits’ the staff: a reactionary castellan, a hypochondriac gardener and a cook who likes to click and...

The War with the Newts develops over a long period of time as a collage of newspaper clippings and other brilliantly parodied records about the miraculous Newts who learn to speak, work, and behave like humans, only lacking the ability to think creatively. Behind the seemingly entertaining and witty satire on newspaper sensationalism, what Capek considered the greatest danger to human...

Capek's novel Krakatit is based on a similar invention to the one described by the author in The Absolute Factory. The inventor Prokop discovers a way to let any substance disintegrate into atoms. The explosion releases a huge amount of energy. He produces a substance called krakatit - the most terrible explosive in the world, which can be detonated remotely using electromagnetic waves. Prokop...

In Serhiy Zhadan's book, readers will find poems written over many years, directly or indirectly related to the railway. Here, the station square comes to dreams, people who look like snails sleep at stations and carry their own homes on their shoulders, soldiers go to the East to defend the country and return to their families. To the soft clatter of wheels and late horns, passengers count...

In its simplest form, Valerian Pidmohylny’s novel 'The City' is the story of an ambitious young man who moves from the village to Kyiv and builds a new life there. He is often compared to the hero of Maupassant’s 'A Dear Friend' and the self-confident and unscrupulous conquerors of social heights from Balzac’s stories. However, for Pidmohylny, it is not just a career story. He places the...

In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop.

For the first time in the last hundred years, the prose of Hryhoriy Kvitka-Osnovyanenko returns to readers as it really was. With its own rhythm and special Slobozhan dialect. Vengeful witches, the dead who celebrate Easter, enchanted treasures, a tumbleweed - a witness against a murderer... Before us appears a vivid and mystical picture of life in Ukrainian lands from Konotop to Kharkiv....

'Women's' texts by a man... Is this even possible? The unexpected and non-chronicle Franko convincingly proves that it is. Sexual slavery, prostitution and human trafficking, war and post-traumatic syndrome, the theory and practice of lies and the pickup technique, the crisis of traditional marriage and patriarchal morality, criminal crimes and investigation, mobbing and suicide - all this...

Valerian Pidmohylnyi wanted to write a novel in which the ship's master would be a woman. And he wrote 'A Little Drama' - a novel about new relationships, a new way of life, a new morality and eternal questions that arise in the unexpected surprises of the age of technological progress. Crazy irrational passion or cold rational calculation - who will emerge victorious from the duel? Is...

Odesa, where only furious storms from the sea flew in. Ukrainian cinema, fresh and bold, like a cabin boy on a tall mast. Young people who are looking for themselves and find — friendship, love, loyalty, courage. A director, an artist, a ballerina, a sailor, Odessa fishermen, port girls, a film factory director, a schooner owner. A subtle love intrigue, the spirit of romance and creative...