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During my numerous research and teaching stays at the universities in Great Britain, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria I was asked to speak about Czech independent literature which existed under the communist regime (1948-1989). As an author of a monograph about Czech literary underground (1999) and many studies on this topic, I expected that it would be easy for me. Nevertheless, I soon came to the conclusion that translation of basic terms connected with independent culture is not only a matter of linguistic ability ...

Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) is along with Jaroslav Hašek and Milan Kundera one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century, his works are translated to 27 foreign languages. The present paper pays attention especially to his texts written in the early 1950s when Hrabal started to use his specific narrative style that combines modernist impulses with down-to-earth tall tales inspired by the milieu of Czech pubs. In that time Hrabal was in a close and friendly contact with much younger Egon Bondy, a poet and ph...