The Black Barons

Another edition of the well-known and popular work from the pen of the renowned author and proven storyteller Miloslav Švandrlík

This now-classic title, reminiscent of the recent past, in which the author, who performed his compulsory military service from 1953–55 in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions in western and southern Bohemia, describes in a colourful and distinctive way the everyday absurdities of an extraordinary era of post-war Czechoslovak-Soviet friendship and its reflection not only in the lives of military conscripts – the PTPs. The subtitle 'We Fought for Čepička' alludes to the then Minister of Defence, Alexej Čepička.
The book, or rather its 17 chapters of the 'first part', was first published by the Vysočina publishing house in 1969, and for the next twenty years, the stories of the 'second part' could only be spread by word of mouth or by being copied. The text did not see a complete edition until after the political changes in 1990.
The novel The Black Barons was also successfully made into a film in 1992 (director: Zdeněk Sirový; screenplay: M. Švandrlík, Z. Sirový), and in 2002, an eleven-part series was filmed at the Brno studio of Czech Television, supplemented with stories from other novels: They Called Him Terazky and Lieutenant Hamáček's Five Axes.