Synopses & Reviews
Karel Leden works in the state publishing house in Prague. This involves a difficult balancing act: how to find books sufficiently worthwile to preserve his self-respect, yet at the same time sufficiently innocuous to avoid offending the powers that be. Karel's life is further complicated by the advent of the beautiful and tantalizing Lenka Silver. Passions rise and suddenly there is a murder. The police call it a tragic accident; there are plenty of suspects, but all that is certain is that the affair is somehow connected to Miss Silver's Past.
Review
"If its underlying message were not so sinister in its implications, this black comedy would qualify as one of the funniest books of the year." New York Times
Review
"The casual exactness of the style, witty and spare, entirely justifies the rare honor of a preface by Graham Greene." Financial Times
Review
"A novelist of the first rank....One of the masters of the current Czech literature....His novels are sad, funny and utterly gripping." George Steiner New Yorker