Moments banal at first sight, but fateful at the second
What did Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík fight about at Christmas 1941? Did Josef Štemberka, the parish priest of Lidice, look forward to summer in 1942? Did Edvard Beneš know how to build a snowman? Why did Marta Gottwald tear her black stockings before her husband's funeral? Who was Archbishop Josef Beran watching from the window of the Roželov Chateau? What did engineer Zeman spill on his pants while watching the Spartacus?
There are moments that can be wounded like a thorn. It is as if in them time stopped for a moment only to suddenly start running much faster and history was able to release all its accumulated power through them.
Jiří Padevět, a two-time Magnesia Litera Award winner, has long since proved that he knows how to handle such moments and human stories and breathe life back into them in his stories. Now comes a new book full of seemingly mundane micro-stories that precede the watershed events familiar from twentieth-century textbooks.
