Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia

by Mariusz Szczygieł, Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Translation)

Winner of the Europe Book Prize

One of Europe’s most preeminent investigative journalists travels to the Czech Republic—the Czech half of the former Czechoslovakia, the land that brought us Kafka—to explore the surreal fictions and the extraordinary reality of its twentieth century.

For example, there’s the story of the small businessman who adopted Henry Ford’s ideas on productivity to create the world’s largest shoe company—and hired modernist giants such as Le Corbusier to design his company towns (which were also the birthplaces of Ivana Trump and Tom Stoppard).

Or the story of Kafka’s niece, who loaned her name to writers blacklisted under the Communist regime so they could keep publishing.

Or the story of the singer Karel Gott, winner of the country’s Best Male Vocalist Award thirty-six years in a row, whose summer home, Gottland, is the Czech Dollywood.

Based on meticulous research and hundreds of interviews with everyone from filmmakers to writers to pop stars to ordinary citizens, Gottland is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a resilient people living through difficult and often bizarre times—equally funny, disturbing, stirring and absurd . . . in a word, Kafkaesque.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Polish Literature, Reportage, Poland, Czech Literature, Audiobook

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Mariusz Adam Szczygieł is a Polish journalist and writer.

Reviews

[Lorenzo Berardi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in Italian. I was forced to.
Despite of my moderate efforts, my current Polish doesn't go very far. And no one thought to give this book a chance on the English speaking market.
Which is a shame.

Perhaps it's just the name of its author, Szczygiel (roughly pronounced Shigyaooh).
Perhaps it's the title of the book, Gottland (no, it's not German).
On the whole, for an average British or American reader, I assume there seems to be very little to get from such obscure and tongue-twisting coordinates.
Which, once again, is a shame.

And if some brave English or American publisher will some day consider the possibility of translating this book, then comes the main topic of it: Czechoslovakia now split into Czech Republic and Slovakia. Which sounds like a further problem. At least for the likes of George W Bush who himself took Slovakia for Slovenia and viceversa.
I mean, apparently there is not that much to say about it, isn't it? Apart from explaining to the Bush family where this little forgotten country can be found on a map.
And unfortunately there are very little if no chances at all that Gottland will become a movie one day with, say, Leonardo Di Caprio performing Tomasz Bata, Natalie Portman putting herself in the shoes of Lida Baarova and Vaclav Havel starring as himself.

That's why I read the Italian translation of Gottland. Because I couldn't wait.
For "Gottland" is what I don't hesitate to call a masterpiece.
And a little publisher named "Nottetempo" had a moment of commercial folly or misunderstood geniality a few years ago.

My girlfriend told me that Marius S. (I will call him like that) was the host of the Polish version of something similar to the David Letterman Show which doesn't explain why he got so much into Czech Republic, but it's nice to report here.
What Marius S. did with Gottland is amazing. This book is gem of real stories coming from the country formerly known as Czechoslovakia covering the twentieth century with the interlude of two world wards, a nazi occupation and a communist dictatorship. The last one being the worst break on many accounts.
Reading Gottland one becomes eager to meet an actual, authentic Czech or Slovak person to check whether Marius S. got these people right. I suppose he did.

What I personally suggest is to either learn Polish or Italian, get this book and read it. I'm sure you will be surprised on how quick will be this process (once you learned one of the two above mentioned languages). And then I suggest you to start mentioning the term "Gottland" in your conversations.
You can refer to this book while talking about a wide range of subjects including cinema, monuments, architecture, taxi rides, literature, Prague, music, trials, Kafka, theater and... shoes.

Perhaps, little by little, someone who counts in the literary business of your country will hear the word "Gottland" being pronounced giving way to a further translation of this book. But I suppose that learning Polish may be easier.

[Left Coast Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the fresh style and writing in this book, at least at first. Your assignment: Tell your life story in fifty short, readable and lightly-linked paragraphs. (In my case, the difficulty would not be in paring it down to fifty paragraphs, but in finding enough interesting material to fill them.) But let's pretend, if you haven't had an interesting life, that you have. Oh, and for an added challenge, these fifty paragraphs must also provide some historical context in which the events of your life played out.

It was fun reading about a shoemaker in the first section, an Elon-Musk like figure who managed to continue building factories and providing living wages to ever-greater numbers of people throughout a couple of world wars and other upheavals in Czech history, even as he transformed from a clever problem solver to an unhinged, ranting asshat.

This was followed by a movie actress who became famous at a very early age -- rarely a recipe for lifelong happiness. A monstrous monument to Stalin, destroyed in 1962, provided the most interesting chapter. Even statues of Stalin killed people. My enthusiasm for this project began waning as each new chapter brought me a new celebrity, actors and musicians and writers, struggling to survive against the backdrop of idiotic Soviet and Soviet-lackey "leadership" in the former Czechoslovakia. I've read this type of material before, so this was an exercise in re-hashing, at least for me. Still, the writing was not without charm:

Richard Walther Darre, a pig-farming expert appointed Nazi minister of health, explained that women's aspirations to be emancipated were due to a malfunction of the sex glands. He regarded women as a day-dreaming, ruminative domestic animal.

According to the press, Jan Bata (the shoe magnate mentioned above) initiated an experiment in Brazil to find ways of increasing the surface area of a cow's hide. "We will put horsefly larvae in small openings all over the cow's skin. This will cause blisters, the skin will stretch, and as a result the surface area will increase by sixty percent."

Once our hero had revealed his fear, cowardice, and lack of character to the audience, the next morning he is not arrested, but appointed minister.

[Antonomasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The existence of Polish reportage as a trademark national genre has been familiar to me for a long time, yet this is the first book-length example I've read. (I also couldn't tell you how it is like and unlike Anglo creative non-fiction, something which has been growing in popularity in the last 5-10 years - and which is probably a new name for a type of writing that has been around considerably longer. Anyway, have a couple of articles on Polish reportage, from the British Library and culture.pl, the nicely designed site of an institute similar to the cultural publicity side of the British Council.)

To many international readers, Gottland is a relatively unusual proposition: reading about a foreign country from the perspective of another - non-English-speaking - foreign country. Or as Szczygieł puts it in a less flattering manner: a representative of one marginal nation writing about another marginal nation. (Given that Polish is the third-most spoken language in the UK, 'marginal' doesn't apply here, at any rate.) The book's geography induces an imagined re-situating in the reader: these things happened not far away, but just over there, over the next border, a few hundred or a few dozen miles away. Comparisons of a political situation in Czechoslovakia with what was happening in Poland (not what went on in the US, or Britain or even Russia) are the most intense moments of this perspective shift: it's also important for showing ways in which Communist regimes differed: to know about one is not necessarily to know about the others; it wasn't just one homogenous Bloc.

I didn't find Gottland quite as amazing as the mahy others who gave 5 stars. There were three chapters of this twentieth century history-by-anecdote which I found enthralling, 'Happy Holidays' 'The Tragedy Hunter' and 'The Movie Has To be Made'. Otherwise it was interesting, not breathtaking; perhaps something about the style - I think I'd have liked it to be a little more creative or descriptive: but it does what it says on the tin - it reports. A marginal difference, the sort of perception that might have even been altered by a font choice.

But what does 'Gottland' mean? The first facet, in the first chapter - one not mentioned in the author's explanation - appeared to refer to Czechoslovakia's first Communist president, Klement Gottwald - inaugurator of the era of history most of the book is about; in the opening chapter about the Bata shoe conglomerate, it's mentioned that the company town of Zlín is renamed Gottwaldov. Then there is pop singer Karel Gott: he was so big in his home country and in Germany for so long, that it's hard to find an equivalent: maybe it's as if Cliff Richard had not got religion, had the rampant, safely adult heterosexuality of Tom Jones*, and was even more popular, for even longer, and had comforting associations: They loved Gott, and they made it through communism along with him. 'Gottland' was the name of a short-lived museum about him, open at the time of the book's first publication: it must have seemed like calling your book on the American South 'Graceland'. And finally Gottland can also be understood as God's land, which is best typified by a quotation from a poem by Vladimír Holan:
'I don't know who does the Gods' laundry
I do know it's we who drink the dirty water'
And that this should have been the book's motto, but I forgot to add it. In Britain, Yorkshire is God's Own Country; sure I've heard of others elsewhere; how many are there?

History can't be spoilered as such: the stories are out in the world already. However, if you're planning on reading Gottland soon and would like most of the content to be a surprise, some of these chapter summaries might be too detailed. As said, this is a book of episodes and anecdotes - non-fiction short stories if you like - accounts of what people at the time said happened, as well as what Szczygieł finds out, decades later, probably did happen - it's not yr. trad. narrative history.

Not a Step Without Bata
It's disconcerting to begin a history book and find it reads like an extended chapter of The Millionaire Next Door, stylistically as well as in content. It's when the narrative becomes openly critical of Bata Shoes: treatment of employees, and the near-megalomania of certain bosses, that one realises retrospectively that some earlier points might have been intended differently: a strict, miserly father's advice to his son, or ruthless factory-floor Taylorism. Anglo-American business and finance books present these as laudable, and this chapter of Gottland provided food for thought about culture differences between various genres of non-fiction writing, never mind countries, eras or workplaces. Ultimately, it's ironic that the Communists disliked Bata - for its profit-making - yet so many of their methods were practically identical: indoctrinating citizens/workers, puritanical standards, expecting people to work like machines when even many healthy human beings can't keep up with that for long.

Lucerna Palace
First of the short chapters that intersperse longer ones. 1906: Vácslav Havel, an engineer, is involved in building this new cinema in Wenceslas Square, Prague. Its name means 'lantern' and it will be mentioned in several future chapters. (Doesn't say so here, but Václav is the same name anglicised as as Wenceslas.)

Just a Woman
Lída Baarová, Czech Golden Age movie star, and Goebbels' pre-war mistress: whilst charismatic (several prominent men fell in love with her on sight) she was seemingly a naive, not especially bright woman who didn't know much about politics, and who was just trying to look after herself and further her career. She was imprisoned awaiting trial for collaboration after the war, but released due to lack of evidence, and had a chequered and nomadic career thereafter. Chapter features material from a 1995 interview with Baarová. Have seen one film featuring Baarová - my least-favourite Fellini, I Vitelloni but can't really remember her.

How Are You Coping with the Germans?
In 1939 a journalist sets out to ask local people this. There follows a strikingly stoic response from an old farmer.

Proof of Love & Victim of Love
The late 40s & early 50s, Stalinism's iron grasp: the seven-year construction of the world's largest statue of Stalin on a hill near Prague. No-one wants to win the competition to design this behemoth, but someone must: Otakar Švec, an art grad turned confectioner whose usual medium is icing, has the burden bestowed on him, for a recycled design. Does it look like Stalin is leading the generic workers who populate the statue? Or being ambushed? Or that they're queuing? And other paranoid questions which, in a dictatorship, no-one can afford to dismiss as overthinking. The thing isn't even finished until after Genocide Joe's death, and it made no-one happy. The statue stands there for almost eight years, until 1962. It outlives the thaw of 1956 and the condemnation of Stalin by seven years. He is condemned, but only in the USSR, Poland and Hungary. French historian Muriel Blaive wrote a book about 1956 in Czechoslovakia entitled..."A Missed Opportunity for Destalinization". There is an astonishing lack of strong reaction to what is happening in neighbouring countries, and the regime in Prague digs itself in more firmly.

Mrs. Not-a-Fake
Looked ironic at first: the touristification of the most unlikely of writers, Kafka. Then his niece, Vera, who acted as a pokrývač ('roofer'), a writer with a good reputation among the Communists, who would sometimes allow proscribed artists to publish under her name - an arrangement which didn't give either side proper satisfaction. In the event of success, neither the owner of the name nor the real author could fully enjoy it. The former pretended to be pleased about work that wasn't his, and the latter couldn't accept the acclaim. The family have Kafkaesque bureaucracy down to a fine art of their own: Szczygieł's attempts to talk to Franz K's surviving relatives are sent from pillar to post and finally hit polite brick walls.

Little Darling
The fall of Jan Procházka, a screenwriter who had once been throughly on-message but became one of the vanguard of the Prague Spring. at the Barrandov Film Studios... he underwent a creative metamorphosis . He discovered that not every screenplay has to be educational, and that what kills creativity is sticking to a formula. He usually worked with Karel Kachyňa, one of the founders of the Czech New Wave, including on The Ear, which was based on Procházka's experience of being bugged by the secret police.
The Spring and its repression: one of those faultlines that run through a country's history. With only a little knowledge, it was too easy to half-forget the differences from Paris 68, most of all, in what followed.
... Alexander Dubček, who allowed the public to speak freely and to photograph each other in nothing but their bathing suits at the pool.
People stopped being afraid of each other, and society was full of admiration for itself…
The newspapers and television lost their colorlessness. The tedium vanished from the theater and cinema. Banned books were published. Censorship was lifted.
In a cartoon in the previously regime-run newspaper Rudé právo, one guy says to another at a café table: “There’s nothing to talk about. It’s all in the papers.”
In another cartoon, a young couple are standing under a tree. The man is carving a large heart into the bark, with the name “DUBČEK” inside it.
People even painted slogans on the walls in Poland, such as: “All Poland is waiting for its Dubček.”
Jan Procházka had nothing to do with the Soviet jackboot's destruction of this brief idyll - but two years later, the secret service ordered Czechoslovak TV and radio to broadcast tapes of conversations between Procházka and his political associates at the time. (Something twenty-first century about this: prominent activist calls for political openness, and then a scandal is made of his personal life.) One crucial utterance recorded was that Dubček was naive. History agrees. But it got Procházka's family ostracised from society, study and employment. People needed someone to blame safely and he was among the scapegoats presented. His relatives blame the broadcasts for triggering the cancer he died of two years later.

The Public Concern
I found one of Lloyd-Jones' other translations too natural, sounding just like Anglo-American litfic, but this title should have been The Public Interest, the UK phrase when debating tabloid intrusion into celebrities' lives. Here, Helena Vondráčková, veteran pop singer.
Despite a court case that the interested party won against the newspaper, which had to pay her damages, the editors continue to regard Vondráčková as the people’s darling, meaning that Blesk is entitled to reveal her personal life.
“In what way is that any different from the practices of the communist Security Service?” I ask.
“In every way!” says one of the journalists. “First of all, by contrast with the Security Service we aim to meet public expectations. Secondly, our publication has nothing to do with communism, because we’re part of a Swiss capitalist concern.”

Life is Like a Man
About Marta Kubišová, one of Vondráčková's former bandmates in The Golden Kids. (They looked like a 1960s Abba with only one boy, and they made lovely melodic pop tunes I'd like to hear more of). Kubišová had made recordings supporting the Spring and during the 'normalisation' that followed, was pushed out of favour: polls were fixed against her, and a scandal followed involving a porn shoot in a fake Danish magazine: she was banned from public life, and the media, even if her name was not mentioned, was forbidden to print the name of the village where she lived with her husband, director Jan Němec (he had to work driving tractors, she in a meat processing plant.) She is philosophical: What she was forced to do was no loss. “A person grows wiser,” says Marta. “Not because he’s washing windows, but because he’s living a life he would never have touched if he were only an artist.”

This chapter also contains two other stories. Firstly, Plastic People of the Universe (whom, unlike Golden Kids, I'd heard of before, presumably because they lasted longer): like Pussy Riot, they were a band who were rebellious politically when it genuinely wasn't safe to be: Szczygieł relates how buildings where they played guerilla gigs were demolished by the government; they were psych rock but as outspoken as any punks, and at a time when artists were more repressed than they had ever been. Intellectuals began to attend trials of the band members and the Charter 77 dissident group coalesced:
in December 1976 and January 1977, the Charter was signed by 242 people, and eventually, over the next few years, by almost 2,000.
The Charter… manifesto... came to the defense of people whom the communists had deprived of their jobs, forcing them to work in professions that were humiliating for them.
It was proof of the power of the powerless.
The people who wrote the text called things by their proper names…. “Hundreds of thousands of citizens are denied freedom from fear, because they are forced to live with the constant threat that, if they express their own views, they will lose their jobs.”
Kubišová became one of the spokespeople for Charter 77, and Vaclav Havel - who's connected with a lot of people mentioned in this book - was her daughter's godfather.
The government swiftly created the Anti-Charter, which artists had to sign for their work to continue to be broadcast, published, sold in shops. “In the name of socialism,” 76 “National Artists,” 360 “Distinguished Artists” and 7,000 ordinary ones signed the Anti-charter. None of them was allowed to read Charter ’77. They were protesting against something they had no idea about.
Writing in 2005, Szczygieł states the Czech media can still create controversy around those who signed the Anti-Charter - including Karel Gott, director Jiří Menzel, and Vondráčková, who was signed up to it during her absence on a foreign tour.

Happy Holidays!
The author finds a satirical magazine from December 1968 in a Czech second-hand bookshop. Despite four months of Soviet occupation, the country is not yet totally paralyzed by fear. In the satirical weekly, there’s a bold festive cartoon: in a few days, it will be Christmas 1968, and two gentlemen are exchanging greetings, saying “Merry Christmas 1989.”
Thus, it’ll only be a happy holiday in twenty years’ time.
How did the cartoonist manage to see the future so precisely?
What did he think of his cartoon when twenty years of despair came to an end at the exact moment he had predicted? In Czechoslovakia, communism really did collapse a month before Christmas 1989. And what did he think three days after Christmas, when Václav Havel was sworn in as president?
Why did that particular year occur to him?
Did he ever make any other prophecies?
Did this drawing have any significance for him afterwards?
I think that anything the cartoonist has to say about this will be worth hearing.
After various esoteric ideas are mentioned, the cartoonist's widow sensibly hypothesises that he simply rotated the last two numbers of the year: 68/89.

The Tragedy Hunter
The improbable story of a skilled writer of 1930s pulp who, uniquely, reinvented himself to produce popular fiction approved by the Communist regime.
This piece is excellent in its complexity, in showing a man who could be both admired and disapproved of. It's not just about a gift for reinvention that could beat Bowie's hands down.
One doesn't hear so much of the people who did crack under intolerable conditions – thinking about what they endured, it's understandable that they did, yet popular history often doesn't want to know.
These days in Anglo-American cultures there is understanding for people who acted under duress in abusive relationships (those who managed not to under similar conditions are considered unusual exceptions with standards others should not be held to). But where political and martial expected-heroism is the subject, attitudes are, or have historically been, different, because of the need to remove pernicious influences thoroughly following a regime change or end of a war. It's not a subject on which I've so far seen other discussion: it first occurred to me during the first chapter of this book. However, some recognition of the difficulties in making a complete purge were recognised in the former Communist Bloc during the 1990s; Wikipedia paraphrases academic research by Holmes, including: After 45–70 years of state communism, nearly every family has members associated with the state. After the initial desire "to root out the reds" came a realization that massive punishment is wrong and finding only some guilty is hardly justice.

Kafkárna
Taken from a novel with one solitary rating on GR: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7..., the story of an American exchange student in Prague in 1985 who wants to research Kafka and attitudes to him, and is told not to refer to him directly.

The Movie Has to Be Made
Two stories - one beginning in 1947 with a Czech girl, Jaroslava, travelling to America on a high school exchange; the other in 2003 with a disaffected provincial teenage boy, Zdeněk - are told in alternating chapterlets, building much like a thriller; the stories are not similar, although there is convergence of a sort. The best piece in the book, IMO. The surprise unfolding was part of what made it great.

Metamorphosis
It is March 27, 2003.
The Komedia Theater in Prague...presents Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis...
In this staging, the main character’s problem is not that he has changed into an insect, but how he’s going to go to work in this state.
An observation about the priorities of contemporary capitalism; also liked it because it reminded me of something I tried to write; glad the idea had already been got out there.


One of the most appealing features of Gottland is not having to start at beginners' level - this isn't your usual primer on the history of a country, but a lot of little spotlights on particular interesting stories; you get to hear something meant for other people: slightly, interestingly illicit, even if the downside is not getting ever reference. Not sure it provided a clear idea of Czech-ness: having built up through books and films some sense of the Nordic countries' differences and concepts of themselves and one another, I'm still trying to acquire the same for some central and east european countries. Is the sense of indomitable hard work general to all the former communist countries of the region? How does it fit with the Good Soldier Svejk as the personification of national character? (And tragic heroes like Jans Hus and Palach are hardly Svejks.) Why are the Czechs the most atheistic country in Europe, whilst bordering one of the most religious? Gottland might not have answered many of the questions I started it with, but its responses to others I hadn't sought were equally interesting.



*Unexpected side effect of writing that paragraph: listening to 'Sex Bomb' on repeat, and wanting to go clubbing.

[Marián Tabakovič · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, riadny náklad. Ako to tí poľskí reportéri robia?

Mariusz Szczygiel nekompromisne analyzuje českú spoločnosť cez fragmenty života niektorých viac, či menej známych osobností. Je majster pera - Gottland sa číta sám, ako filmové obrazy. Myslíte si, že o niektorých témach viete dosť (ako to bolo s Lídou Baarovou - veď sme všetci videli film s Pauhofkou!), ale dozviete sa širší, pomerne šokujúci kontext. O ďalších osudoch neviete zrejme skoro nič (výborný text o tom, ako to bolo s najväčšou Stalinovou sochou v Prahe a čo sa stalo s jej autorom).

Kniha je plná smutných, ale pravdivých absurdít. Viackrát sa mi dostala pod kožu. Ukazuje, aké sú životné istoty iluzórnym konceptom, aké je všetko prchavé a k čomu všetkému sa za istých okolností môžete prepožičať. Alebo, ako to kafkovsky hodnotí samotný autor: "Napsal jsem knihu o tom, že někdo nebo něco mění lidi ve šváby a jak na to ti lidé reagují."

[Alisea Thenea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Výborná kniha!
Reportáž, ktorá opisuje ako sa žilo v našom drahom Československu pred rokom 89. Baťa, Gott, Procházka, Lída Baarová, Palach, Charta 77, Kubišová atď sú mená, ktoré ožijú v príbehoch, ktoré sa naozaj stali.

Skvelo napísané dielko, kritické, nútiace obzrieť sa do minulosti, ktorá sa nás dotýka.

[Hana · Rating 4 out of 5]

All this happened, more or less.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Hana's nightmare: ...I awoke suddenly. There were men wearing ill-fitting suits going through my bookcases. They were pulling my books off the shelves. “Trash!” One man grabbed my copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, ripping the cover from my old, well-thumbed paperback, shredding it with his hairy fingers. They took all my Harry Potters. All seven of them. “Garbage, low-brow propaganda,” said the second man, pulling my copy of Ender's Game and tearing page after page from the book. “This is American brak! You are working for the American spies! Don’t deny it!”

I let them take Harry and Ender. And Katniss Everdeen. And a couple of John Grishams I’d picked up at the airport. I didn’t mind so much about the Grishams.

And then they went for Connie Willis. “To Say Nothing of the Dog. "It says right here it is a romance!!" said the man with the hairy fingers. "Immoral! Time travel? This is brak, subversive, mindless, empty brak.”

“No, NO!” I pleaded. “It’s not junk. Look, LOOK. There are quotes from famous authors, classics. It’s satire. I mean….no I didn’t mean to say that….” They shredded my copy of To Say Nothing of the Dog; to say nothing of what they did to Three Men in a Boat.

My dear friends are gone. Gone forever....

In that moment just on awakening when dreams and reality are tangled I wondered if this was real. And then it came back to me. All of this really did happen, more or less, though not to me.

My strange dream was perhaps an inevitable side-effect of reading Mariusz Szczygiel’s powerful collection of psychedelic, tragi-comic tales from Czechoslovakia. There were times before the communists when the land and people were almost (but not quite) normal. And then came Czechoslovakia’s communist regime, the fragile doomed spring of freedom, followed by the Soviet invasion of 1968, and then the equally strange freedoms won in the Velvet Revolution of 1989.

More than books were ripped apart. These were places and times that shattered souls, careers, broke families, societies. Szczgiel’s portraits of this fragmented Cubist world are also broken, fractured, told in vignettes that are sometimes only a page long and at other times ramble across generations.

This was the story that gave me the nightmare:

"After the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, society has to be forced into detox. The authorities give orders for anything that brings simple pleasure to be liquidated.

Liquidation committees are established. Their task is to remove crime fiction, horror and adventure stories, thrillers, romance novels and science fiction….The committees scour the bookstores, printing and publishing houses….they requisition countless copies of Incautious Maidens or Flames at the Metropole. So that those who prefer the false view of the world presented in cheap novels will never find refuge again."

The committees can’t cope with the volume of destruction needed and so requisition elementary school children to collect and rip up trashy books. Thus endeth Jasmines Below the Balcony.

The authorities had a word for these kinds of books. They called them brak, a Czech word that means lack or shortage, but also trash. Between 1950 and 1958 almost 70 percent of popular fiction was destroyed and eventually replaced by “socialist-realist trash written by new authors”, one of whom is profiled here, a survivor who recreated such a fractured identity for himself that Szczygieł dubs him the Cubist Man.



So many voices were silenced and not just the writers. Here you will find the stories of lives—or at least potentialities—shredded; but there are also astonishing tales of courage, of luck, and even redemption.

Karol Gott was one of the survivors. He was part of a singing group,The Golden Kids, that was wildly popular before the Soviet invasion of 1968. Karel Gott continued his rise to fame throughout the years of oppression. He has his own museum. Every single book about his love life has been a best seller.

Marta Kubišová, another of the three Golden Kids was not so fortunate. In 1968, just as Soviet tanks rolled into Prague to crush the country’s nascent liberalization, she recorded her hit song "Modlitba pro Martu" A Prayer for Marta

Let peace continue with this country.
Let wrath, envy, hate, fear and struggle vanish.
Now, the lost reign over your affairs will return to you. People, it will return.

The cloud is slowly sailing away from the skies,
Everyone is reaping his own harvest.
Let my prayer speak to the hearts
Not burned by the times of bitterness like blooms by a late frost.

Toward the end of 1969, the ‘normalization’ began and Marta was denounced in an East German newspaper for singing Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin with Czech lyrics: “The Western leisure industry is influencing revisionist attitudes in Czechoslovakia. An opponent can systematically gradate his ideological sabotage with the help of pop songs….to further demoralize and by the same token create a rabble that would then conduct campaigns against the socialist authorities.”

In 1970 Marta was framed by the authorities with faked pornographic pictures. For the next twenty years, her smoky contralto voice would be silenced; banned from performing she spent her life in obscurity, scrubbing floors, putting plastic dolls together. She is in no way bitter or even angry.



A Prayer for Marta became an anthem of the underground resistance to the Soviet’s invasion and the Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution of 1989.

The final story was so devastatingly horrible I'm almost sorry that I read it. It's about two boys who became a human torches—a modern youth, Zdenek Adamec, disillusioned with the emptiness of his life, and Jan Zajic who protested the Soviet invasion of 1968 by setting himself on fire. I do understand why Szczygiel closed his book this way and the intersecting tales were well and movingly told, but the utter despair was hard for me to take.

As with any book of short stories it is inevitable that some work better than others. And since this is a work that I read in translation I always wonder what it would be like to read this in the original. In several places I wish the translator and/or editor had taken pity on the non-Czechoslovak reader and filled in a bit of the historical context, if even in a footnote. For example I had to Google “A Prayer for Marta” to find the full lyrics; the brief first couple of lines included in Szczygiel’s text were so innocent that I could not fathom what the Soviets found objectionable.

[S©aP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lettura terminata in due giorni. Fantastico. Velocissimo. Nervoso e brillante. Essenzialmente pieno di una sofferenza - quella del popolo cecoslovacco sotto la dittatura comunista - che chiedeva (e chiede ancora) di essere portata a conoscenza dei più; narrata, insistentemente, alla moltitudine accidiosa che prosegue a commuoversi al suono dell' "Internazionale"; a quella parte della società che crede ancora si possano fare dei "distinguo" pelosi di fronte alle dittature, alla mala gestione del potere, alla schifosa attitudine umana a compiacere il potere o i potenti, all'opportunismo, alla mancanza di etica, o al relativismo esasperato. Caratteristiche che sfociano sempre nel pragmatismo più materialista e immorale.

PS: Nike Literary Award for Audience (2007) - Prix AMPHI (2009) - European Book Prize for Fiction (2009) - Angelus Nominee (2007) -
Quanti conoscono questo testo, in Italia?

[Mag · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a very good, but profoundly depressing book. Apart from an opening essay on Bata – the Czech whose shoes became famous worldwide - it deals with the hardcore communist times in Czechoslovakia. It’s very unsettling to realize the extent of control and terror that the regime had. It eerily reminds one that it was indeed Kafka’s country- ‘where the life of the accused is the crime in itself.’ Szczygiel’s second book on Czechoslovakia, Make Yourself a Paradise, is lighter, the stories are more quirky. The absurdity of the communist system there is a mere absurdity, you don’t feel it as a killing force, whereas here people not only lose their freedom, they lose their sanity or their lives- they are either killed or they kill themselves.

[Razvan Zamfirescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Două SMS-uri trimise de Elena m-au făcut să citesc Gottland:
Această carte este pură ficțiune. Faptele care s-au întâmplat sunt mult mai groaznice.
Dar nu vă este frică (de nemți)? De ce să-mi fie frică? Se miră sincer și continuă: În plus, stimată doamnă, omul nu poate muri decât o singură dată. Iar dacă moare puțin mai devreme, nu face decât să fie mort ceva mai mult timp.
Mariusz Szczygiel este polonez și scrie despre Cehoslovacia. Începe cu istoria fabricantului de pantofi Bata, trece prin idila lui Goebbels cu Lida Baarova, nepoata lui Kafka ș.a.m.d. pentru a termina cu Karel Gott, un muzician care a trecut cu succes prin comunism și a ajuns să aibă chiar și un muzeu care dă și numele volumului de față.
Mariusz Szczygiel și Cehoslovacia anilor 1900, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000.

Restul recenziei aici

[Gabriela Kozhuharova · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Готланд“ – миналото не е окей: http://azcheta.com/gotland-mariush-sh...

Мариуш Шчигел не е просто писател, а журналист, и то основател на Института за репортаж във Варшава. В този ред на мисли на „Готланд” може да се гледа и като на поредица от репортажи, в която реализмът на случващото се е осезаем и не позволява на читателя да се изплъзне и да забрави какво всъщност чете – не фикция, а нечий отминал живот.

Книгата е написана много увлекателно, аз лично я прочетох на един дъх, толкова интересна ми беше. Шчигел разказва покъртителните съдби с горчива ирония, но никога назидателно. Когато пише например за някои прословути колаборационисти по време на немската окупация, сътрудници на ДС или просто любимци на режима, той не осъжда, а задава въпроси: защо, какво се е случило, каква е била алтернативата, как бихте постъпили вие?

[Madeleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfortunately this book is not available in English (though I sincerely hope somebody fixes that soon), so I read the excellent French translation by Margot Carlier. It's a terrific book, engaging and moving and funny (in a sort of bleak, Mitteleuropan way). I was particularly struck by the story of the building of the Stalin monument in Prague in the late 50's — among other calamities that surround its construction, the artist's model who posed for Stalin ends up killing himself because everyone on the street has started calling him 'Stalin', and his psyche can't take it.
Kafka is lurking around in more than one chapter, too, and I'm always happy to run into him.

[Joanka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Naprawdę dobra książka, łącząca w sobie niejako fabularyzowane kwestie historyczne, społeczne i kulturalne dotyczące Czech. I nie mam jej zupełnie nic do zarzucenia, po prostu pomimo najlepszych chęci, Czechy nie są w stanie porwać mojej wyobraźni i serca. Są interesujące jak każdy jeden kraj na świecie, ale nie poruszają we mnie żadnej czułej struny, dzięki której chciałabym temat zgłębiać, więc mimo całego uznania, tu chyba się ze Szczygłem pożegnamy.

[Zuza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jsem nadšená. Szczygieł vybral n známějších i skoro neznámých postav z českých dějin 20. století a o každé z nich napsal kapitolu-reportáž, i když nevím, jestli je to zrovna to správné slovo, co hledám. Do výběru se dostal namátkou třeba Baťa, Lída Baarová, Marta Kubišová, Karel Fabián či Otakar Švec, autor Stalinova pomníku na Letné. Szczygieł ovšem - jak se píše na obálce - nezapisoval rozšířené mýty, ale pátral v archivech, vyhledával svědky různých událostí a i potomky lidí, o které se zajímal. Díky tomu pak například mluvil s neteří Franze Kafky či listoval strojopisem scénáře Ucha. A taky napsal tuhle skvělou knížku.
Doporučuji všem.
A doporučuju též předloňský rozhovor se Szczygiełem na DVTV.

,,Paní, člověk může umřít jenom jednou. A když umře trochu dřív, tak je holt o trochu dýl mrtvej."

,,Tento příběh se nestal. Věci, které se opravdu přihodily, byly mnohem horší."

,,Eduard Kirchberger se narodil v Praze roku 1912.
Téměř ve stejnou dobu a ve stejném městě vznikla první kubistická plastika lidské hlavy na světě.
Ty dva fakty spolu nemají nic společného."

[Jan jr. Vaněk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Iritující, přeceněná, špatná kniha. Hojnost věcných chyb, nepřesností, zavádějících, zplošťujících a vágních formulací; k tomu lyrizující až afektovaný styl jak z nejhorších socrealistických črt (že by Dan Hrubý měl ten svůj bizarní způsob psaní "co věta, to odstavec" odsud?). Vážně, obecně se uznává pravdivost konceptu "když se zpravodajství v médiích týká věci, o níž člověk něco ví, okamžitě ho odhalí jako zásadně nekvalitní"; tak co čekáte, když Polák píše do časopisu o moderní české historii? Jediné, co jsem neznal z primárnějších zdrojů, byl Fabián/Kirchberger, ale mnohem radši bych si přečetl nějakou studii Pavla Janáčka, kde by prostě publikoval materiál se všemi podrobnostmi a případně zhodnotil knihy.

Je jistě smutné, že u nás prakticky vymizely rozsáhlejší, hlubší analytické "features"; ale příklad bychom si měli brát spíš z USA než Polska.

[Mela · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book consists of reportages telling the stories of people who lived in the Chech part of Czechoslovakia (independent from 1918 to IIWW, and being a part of the Eastern Bloc until 1989).
I knew a little bit about Czechs because it is hard not to know at least something about neighboring countries. Yet, there wasn't much. Now, I know and better feel Chech's soul and their attitude toward life.

I loved the author's wit and the way of storytelling.

[4.5 stars]

[Kuba Bożanowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Świetna lektura, posiada idealne jak dla mnie wyważenie proporcji między poruszającymi historiami, trywialnymi ciekawostkami i rysem historycznym, wszystko opakowane w ciekawą narrację, skaczącą po pozornie niezwiązanych, lecz na koniec zazębiających się wątkach. Aż się chce zgłębić dokładniej losy naszych południowych sąsiadów, które są - jak trafnie ujął Adam Michnik - tak podobne, a tak bardzo odmienne od naszych.

[Łukasz Buczkowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kilka dni temu usłyszałem od osoby, która od 3 lat mieszka w Brnie, że "nie potrafi zrozumieć obojętności Czechów wobec ludzi i świata". Po przeczytaniu tej książki jestem w stanie odpowiedzieć zarówno "a ja potrafię", jak i "ja też nie" i to według mnie stanowi jej największą siłę.

[Кремена Михайлова · Rating 4 out of 5]

„Когато през лятото на 1968 година Хавел бил в Щатите, там се срещнал с чешкия писател Егон Хостовски, който емигрирал веднага след комунистическия пуч през 1948 година. Хостовски му казал, че бил емигрирал от самия себе си.
Толкова ужасно се страхувал от това, което можел да направи, ако останел.“

„Филмът е готов, но не може да излезе със заглавието, което иска сценаристката. А тя би искала да се казва Бяла лъжа.
Думата „лъжа“, също като думата „истина“, е забранена в изкуството и по време на „нормализацията“ нито една от тях не може да се използва. Друга легендана чехословашката Нова вълна, Вера Хитилова, не могла например да използва в един филм думата „мисля“. „Мисля, че…“ – казвал доста бавно актьорът, а приемната комисия решила, че той няма право толкова многозначително да мисли, защото това можело да се тълкува по много начини. А когато в една от сцените някакъв мъб се заключил, без да иска, в тоалетната и викал: „Затворен съм.“ Вера Хитлиова била принудена да изреже от филма цялата сцена.“

„Разбрах, че клиниката за психично болни в Чехословакия е единственото нормално място, защото там всички могат безнаказано да говорят, каквото наистина мислят.“

[Alžbětina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hodnotím audioknihu, která je zkrácená oproti knižní předloze (jak jsem bohužel zjistila až po zakoupení a doposlechnutí).
Musím říct, že jsem byla nejdřív zaražena formou, ono se to totiž hlavně ze začátku dost divně poslouchá, když slyšíte historii Baťů jako časovou osu. Zvykla jsem si, ale audiokniha není pro Gottland ten nejlepší formát. To ovšem neznamená, že by mě občas nemrazilo z lidských osudů a peripetií.
Taky by mě zajímalo, proč byly z audioknihy vyškrtnuty skoro všechny ženy - Marta Kubišová, Jaroslava Moserová, ani Lída Baarová ve zkrácené verzi nefigurují. Což je přinejmenším podivné, když tu máme Baťu, Procházku, Švece a Fabiána. Jen neteř Franze Kafky zůstala jako jediná zachovávající své mlčení.
Podivná dramaturgická volba, která mě jen víc upevňuje v přesvědčení, že v tomto případě si budu muset přečíst celou knihu ve své původní podobě.

[moony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jak zazwyczaj nieziemsko męczę się z reportażami, ten mnie pochłonął. O Czechach (i państwie i ludziach) wiem tyle co nic i nigdy dowiadywać się nie planowałam, sięgnęłam z polecenia, ale teraz czuję niedosyt. Ustawienie wszystkiego przez Kafkę było genialne, choć oczywiście nie zaczaiłam na początku… Świetne świetne świetne świetne, czytajcie.

[Zuzana Kuczyński · Rating 4 out of 5]

Karel Gott is sacred in a desacralized reality.
A world without God is impossible, so in the world’s most atheistic country, which is the Czech Republic, the sixty-seven-year-old star plays an important role.
The role of mein Gott. 🕺🏻

[Mientras Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me ha encantado, la verdad. Poco que añadir

[Zuzana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Skvelo napísané.
Pre mňa hlavné posolstvo - nemožno súdiť rozhodnutia ľudí. Nevieme, ako by sme sa sami zachovali v rovnakej situácii. A strach je mocný pán.
Aj naša minulosť je mocná.

[Michal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vynikající kniha, která dává zajímavou a smutnou perspektivu na český národ. Faktický způsob vyprávění je z počátku zvláštní, ale po chvilce výborný. Moc moc skvělá kniha. Doporučuji!

[Flavia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skończyłam! I w sumie... najbardziej podobała mi się kolekcja Post Scriptum na końcu. Chciałabym więcej Mariusza Szczygła w Mariuszu Szczygle, choć nie może to być zarzut dla książki, bo gatunek zobowiązuje. Niestety gatunek zobowiązuje też mnie, bym za nim nie przepadała. Coś w reportażu mnie po prostu zraża. Nie znaczy to jednak, że nie nasyciłam się tym tekstem, bo pośród przeczytanych przeze mnie reportaży zajmuje obecnie najwyższą pozycję — zarówno przez temat, jak i jego ujęcie.

Muszę jednak przyznać, iż w związku z ilością postaci przedstawionych w książce całość przypomina puzzle, którym brakuje kilku kawałków. Trzeba się nieco nagłowić, by ułożyć spójny obraz i odkryć jak łączą się poszczególne elementy. Jeśli potraktujemy to jako koncepcję możemy założyć: no tak, to właśnie najlepiej odzwierciedla Czechy — te martwe punkty i nie wiadomo co; kafkowska powieść, czeski film. No i w porządku, jak zinterpretujesz — tak się wyśpisz! Gottland mnie nie zachwycił, ale zaciekawił — sięgnę na pewno po inne teksty Szczygła. A jak oszaleję to może nawet spróbuję je przeczytać po czesku, czemu by nie??

Ok. 7/10 może troche naciągane na uszy

[Abigail]

Powstrzymam się z oceną tej książki do czasu aż omówimy ją na zajęciach. Chociaż jak na razie nie czuję, żeby reportaże były dla mnie.

[Helena Nagy · Rating 5 out of 5]

POLECAM
Bardzo bardzo dobrze się czyta, dowiedziałam się dużo o powojennej historii Czech, komunizmie, który oni przeżyli całkiem inaczej niż znam z opowiadań rodziców i dziadków. Niesamowite ile jest Czechów o których za granicą nie ma się pojęcia, a ich biografie są tak bogate, że ich życie można by spokojnie rozłożyć na 5 osób.. no i Czechy<3

[Bloodorange · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember listening to the audiobook in the middle of winter of 2012/2013, pushing a pram through snow, day after day. Even today I am inclined to think this book is objectively, not subjectively, depressing. 3,5 stars.

[Szwedula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wróciłam do niej po kilku dobrych latach i ponownie wciągała mnie każda opowiedziana w niej historia. Trudne losy ludzi opowiedziane z nutą "czeskiego humoru" i tego pozornie lekkomyślnego patrzenia na świat. Majstersztyk reportażu.

[Quanti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nenápadná, ale hodně silná sonda do duše české povahy. Portréty známých i méně známých osobností od Bati po Zdeňka Adamce, který se v roce 2003 upálil. Bavilo.