The Bass Saxophone: Two Novellas

by Josef Škvorecký, Kaca Polackova-Henley (Translator)

Despite our supposed familiarity with the 20th-century police state--predicted by Kafka, anatomized by Orwell, and discussed in each day's newspapers--the facts of it still startle. The Nazis had a strict set of rules governing what they called "Judeonegroid music," and in "Red Music," an indispensable essay on the fate of jazz in the Nazi-occupied Czech republic and in Communist Czechoslovakia that introduces the English-language edition of The Bass Saxophone, Josef Skvorecky presents them in deadpan paraphrase:

5) strictly prohibited is the use of instruments alien to the German spirit (so-called cow-bells, flexatone, brushes, etc.) as well as all mutes which turn the noble sound of wind and brass instruments into a Jewish-Freemasonic yowl.

This arresting introduction is followed by two novellas, "Emöke" and "The Bass Saxophone," about the possibilities for art and individualism under totalitarian rule. The former is a love story of sorts. Set at a rural resort in Communist Czechoslovakia, it recounts a cynical young man's attempted holiday seduction of a Hungarian beauty, a woman who has renounced any hope of sexual love in favour of a mishmash of Theosophic spirituality. "The Bass Saxophone" also takes place in a small Czech community, but one under German occupation, shortly after the battle of Stalingrad. It is the story of a young saxophonist who, through his fascination with an almost-mythical instrument, is coaxed into playing for the enemy.

All of the characters in The Bass Saxophone have been maimed--physically, culturally, emotionally, or spiritually--by their existence under totalitarianism. The realism of the stories often seems more like surrealism, and Skvorecky's language often segues into flights of lyricism, paralleling the music that animates the book. Skvorecky's best writing is to be found in his longer novels, but The Bass Saxophone is an ideal introduction for readers who want to become familiar with his work before taking on The Engineer of Human Souls or Dvorak in Love. --Jack Illingworth

Genres: Fiction, Czech Literature, Short Stories, Historical Fiction, War, Jazz, Music

214 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Josef Škvorecký, CM was a Czech writer and publisher who spent much of his life in Canada. Škvorecký was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1980. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country. By turns humorous, wise, eloquent and humanistic, Škvorecký's fiction deals with several themes: the horrors of totalitarianism and repression, the expatriate experience, and the miracle of jazz.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

"And it rose in front of me. A mechanism of strong, silver-plated wires, the gears, the levers, like the mechanism of some huge and absolutely nonsensical apparatus, the fantasy of some crazy mixed-up inventor." On eighteen-year-old jazz enthusiast Danny's first beholding the bass saxophone.

The wild freedom of jazz meets Nazi rules and regulations - The Bass Saxophone by Czech author Josef Škvorecký has been acclaimed one of the most powerful short novels in all of literature.

In his introductory essay, Mr. Škvorecký lists the Nazi regulations, ten in number, applicable to Czech dance orchestras at the time of his country's occupation. Here's a snippet: "As to tempo, preference is also to be given to brisk compositions over slow ones (so-called blues); however, the pace must not exceed a certain degree of allegro, commensurate with the Aryan sense of discipline and moderation. On no account will Negroid excesses in tempo (so-called hot jazz) or in solo performances (so-called breaks) be tolerated." Nothing like a bunch of uptight, mentally constipated, goosestepping weinersnitzels attempting to reel in the explosive funk of riffing cool cats.

How those jackboots loathed what they termed Judeonegroid music with its yowls and wailing and giving in to "dark" rhythms and bending of sound from a wah-wah trumpet mute or buzzing trombone or the ultimate insult, the base saxophone, that monstrous centaur, metallic rhino, hulking behemoth, a silver serpent sounding its deep anti-Aryan vibrations.

The Bass Saxophone contains elements of folk fable, a charming story of the clashing of totalitarian power with the freedom of artistic expression. Since there is little action beyond the youthful narrator, let's call him Danny, meeting up and playing with a group of traveling musicians in a Nazi occupied town, I'll shift to offering comments on specific passages.

"Holy cow, I said to myself, and it was funny all of a sudden, because every deviation from the norm is an impulse to laughter - people are apt to be conventional, and unfeeling toward everything but themselves." ---------- In all his young life, Danny was never a believer in apparitions, hallucinations, parapsychology or miracles; his only myth was music. Now that he's holding a bass saxophone for the first time it is as if he's entered another dimension, soaring over the realm of the serious, the routinized, a world of strictly enforced regularity and compliance.

"I walked down the back staircase to the hotel auditorium with the bass saxophone in my arms. The brown twilight was transformed into the murky dusk of dim electric lights." ----------- Danny is about to groove with what just might be a group of circus freak show performers: an ugly fat woman with a clown nose, an amputee, a hunchback, a dwarf, a swan-like beauty, a giant playing accordion.

"My eyes followed the notes; it was a waltz in A minor, a very simple affair, based on the effect of deep notes, certainly not what I yearned to play on this saxophone - it was no Rollini - although it was exactly what I was capable of playing from sheet music. But again, why?" ---------- Surprise, surprise! Turns out this band isn't about jazz; rather, they will be playing music of the waltz, polka, oom pah pah variety.

"The senseless happiness of music engulfed me like a golden bath; it's a happiness that never depends on the objective, only the subjective, and perhaps it has a more profound link with the humanness of things because it''s altogether senseless: the strenuous production of certain nonsensical sounds - that are no good for anything." ---------- Music is music. Once the colossal chords of the stupendous sax are brought to life, it is art for art's sake. Groove, Danny, groove baby!



'Horst Hermann Kühl: the name mentally slotted itself into place too, and along with it sounded the mad, threatening voice behind the wallpaper." ---------- Danny thought he heard the voice of Kühl, member of the Gestapo, back when he was up in the hotel room with the circus musicians. Understandable. When you are under the thumb of a foreign police state, there is hardly a time when you don't hear a threatening voice, real or imagined, in the next room.

"Then they locked Vicherek up for "the public performance of eccentric Negroid music," . . . you can't distinguish between what happened and what is a dream; so swiftly gone; but that is the way it should be." --------- Ah, the absurdity of men and women put under arrest and dragged off to prison or put in front of a firing squad for the most unreasonable reasons. Living through such deadly times can appear as an unending dream or nightmare.

"A velvet gown; and behind it other satined and brocaded German ladies with a mobile jewelry exhibition, the origin of which could not have been reliably proven in a more strictly legalistic society, little shining stories ending in death; and black, brown, and gray uniforms; a panorama of iron crosses." ----------- Peering through a peephole, Danny sees the audience for their performance: German women wearing jewelry stolen from Jews destined for the gas chamber; SS men settling in for an evening's entertainment that could turn into a death sentence for the performers at any moment.

How will it all end for Danny and his band? I encourage you to read Josef Škvorecký's short, jazzy, dreamy classic for yourself.


Nazis marching into Prague

Note: This book also includes a second novella, Emöke, also about playing jazz in Czechoslovakia but this time under the watchful eye of a Soviet police state. I'll be posting a separate review.


Josef Škvorecký, 1924-2012

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slim volume gathers together two novellas by Czech writer, Josef Škvorecký, both of which were written in the mid 1960s. At this time, Škvorecký was considered a dissident and earlier books of his had been banned. Following the events of 1968, he would leave Czechoslovakia for good. His love for saxophones and jazz and his descriptions of music put me in mind of Julio Cortázar. Both novellas are modernist in their construction, featuring many rambling, improvised, two to three page paragraphs, influenced no doubt by modern jazz composition. Cave lector!: in common with other Central European fiction that I've read from this period, it's far from politically correct and highly chauvinistic.

The first is Emöke, originally called The Legend of Emöke. It concerns the "intellectual" but cynical narrator's brief infatuation with the titular Emöke, an ingenuous and fragile Hungarian single mother whom he meets at a holiday camp in Czechoslovakia. How can the cognisant reader not be reminded of Ferenc Karinthy's Epepe (published in the Anglophone world as Metropole), also named for its love interest? Both protagonists blow their chances with the young women concerned and come to regret it. In Emöke, the narrator plays with the heady power of sexual and romantic attraction only to find it blow up in his face. This account of a people's republic at play brings to life a strange, lost world.

The Bass Saxophone was written the year before the Prague Spring. This time the setting is Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. It's a dream-like tale featuring the titular instrument, a kind of mythical creature that enchants the narrator, and a travelling septet of shabby outsider musicians (one is a hunchback, another legless and so on - only the female singer is physically perfect) led by one Lothar Kinze. The narrator somehow finds himself on stage with this ragged ensemble, playing the bass saxophone to an assembly of Nazi dignitaries before being dragged off and replaced by the instrument's owner. And that's it, really. Jazz was a symbol of freedom for dissidents in the communist East - think of the allure of the young saxophonist in Ida. It fulfils the same role here under Nazism. Totalitarian regimes don't like jazz; it defies their discipline. The vast valve instrument blows a ground-shaking raspberry at the murderous, thieving invader.

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

ساکسیفون بیس
جوزف اشکورتسکی
مجتبی ویسی
نشر ثالث

ترجمه‌ی فارسی کتاب‌و اینجا پیدا نکردم و به همین دلیل نسخه‌ی اصلی رو اضافه کردم به لیست کتاب‌هام.
جوزف اشکورتسکی یکی از تاثیرگذارترین چهره‌ها در هنر و ادبیات چک به‌شمار می‌ره که با وجود نفرت آشکارش از نازیسم و کمونیسم نثر بسیار شاعرانه و دلچسبی داره.
این امتیاز نه به‌دلیل ضعف کتاب، که به‌دلیل ضعف خودم در شناخت موسیقی داده شده و گمون می‌کنم برای فردی که به‌صورت حرفه‌ای موسیقی جاز رو دنبال می‌کنه و ازش سر در می‌آره، جزو آثار جذاب و خواندنی قرار بگیره.
اما برای من از اون دسته کتاب‌هایی شد که خیلی از قسمت‌هاش نفهمیده ورق خورد و تنها سبک شخصی نویسنده و اطلاعات تاریخی - اجتماعیش من‌و تا پایان کتاب کشوند.
کتاب از یک جستار و دو داستان تشکیل شده که توی همه‌شون موسیقی جاز نقش بسیاری داره. بیشترین ارتباطم با کتاب توی داستان دوم شکل گرفت و ازش لذت بردم.

[Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Skvorecky experienced the Nazi occupation of czechoslovakia and the Prague Spring. This short novel reads like a Fellini film.
The characters are unforgetable. Skvorecky, an old teacher,now,
living in Canada (if still alive)also wrote several fine coming of age novels and a couple of good mysteries. All of his work is infused with a love of jazz. How can I not like the guy?

[Czarny Pies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joseph Skvorecky was a writer who experimented with many genres. With the occasional misfire, he was successful most of the time. The two novellas in this collection constitute a foray into the occult and fantastic. While Emoke is an honourable effort, the Bass Saxophone is a resounding success.

Although, Skvorecky was an avowed fan of Edgar Allen Poe, I found the mood similar to that which I experienced when as a little boy, I first heard a recording of Alan Mills and Jean Carignan' performing Ti-Jean and the Devil.

The protagonist of the Bass Saxophone is Danny Smiricky, Skvorecky's literary alter ego. As the story begins Danny is living in German occupied Czechoslovakia. His main interest in live is playing Jazz on the Saxophone. One night Danny gets a chance to join an orchestra playing at a Nazi Ball. He accepts because if he does so he will get the chance to play the very rare, mythical bass saxophone which is so uncommon that Smiricky has never even seen one before.

Skvorecky joins the band in an onirique, hallucinatory ball room. The other orchestra members are all physical oddities but they play with enormous skill. Danny is nothing less than brilliant on the weird instrument. Eventually the ball room evaporates. The orchestra of goblins and phantoms departs. Danny is left wondering what it all meant. Did he sell his soul to the devil or did he just take advantage of a unique opportunity to be for one night a great artist? The reader certainly hopes that Danny, like Ti-Jean has emerged unscathed from his encounter.

[Kurt Gottschalk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read, Emoke, a lovely tale of suppressed romance, while traveling in Prague. Even decades after its wartime setting, it resonated with the land I was visiting. It's a wonderful novella that transcends any prejudices against stories about love or war.

It took me a couple months after returning to New York to get to the title story of the book, but when I did I finished it in a single day (to a soundtrack of Anthony Braxton, John Butcher and Urs Leimgruber). This is a fantastic piece of writing! It too is a Nazi-occupation tale, but Skvorecky writes wonderfully about sentimental music and poorly played music, about idolizing instruments and interpersonal anxieties. The slightly hallucinatory story works like a prolonged saxophone solo: Sometimes you have to trust the artist and ride his wave, knowing it'll come around again

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some books that just FEEL Czech and after living there for so many years, I could feel this book, based on the people I knew. Really delightful.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two excellent novellas beautifully written by Skvorecky. The first titled "Emoke" was about a young man who meets an attractive but very strange young woman. She is very spiritual combining traditional religious beliefs with mysticism and other supernatural beliefs while he is an atheist. He hopes to begin a romance but things didn't work out for him. The other story was "The Bass Saxophone" about a young Czech man who is reluctantly drawn into a group of German musicians. The story is told in long interminable but very poetic sentences that seem to go on for pages to describe seemingly minor events. However, it was quite a good read.

[Marguerite Hargreaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this gem at the CNU library. It speaks eloquently of music as a force for hope and change in a totalitarian society and more specifically of jazz as a redemptive force. I wonder if the music is better now that the society is more open. After I read it, I sought out music that featured a bass (baritone) sax. As quests go, it was worth it!

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Josef Skvorecky. Creates the deepest longest and loveliest sentences that ramble with much meaning.

[John Rey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book consists of two novellas.

The first one is "Emoke". It has a potent message that I feel still very relevant one's exploration in faith, reason and love.

The second novella is the "The Bass Saxophone". I think it is written in a stream of consciousness of the character. It feels like a cruise on someone's imagination connecting what one remembers of his past and relating it to his present situation where he encounters a band of musicians performing to a German audience in a Czech town during the reign of the Reich in Czech Republic. For me, it's still a hazy memory as I look back on this novella. It deserves a second reading to do justice on this piece.

[Ana-Maria Petre · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. It felt like dreaming of a deserted place, where the ghosts of ordinary lives still lingers in broken shop windows. A strange, glitchy dream you'd be glad to wake up from, but also a little sad that the place you dreamt of never existed, and will never exist again.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so fucking deliciously great. Every thought and word consumed. An intellect’s/sensualist’s page turner in two novellas that literally made me late for a gathering tonight because i simply could not put it down. Has been a long time since i’ve had a book this riveting. Amazing book with which to end the year.

[Stosch · Rating 3 out of 5]

eh

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Bass Saxophone is actually two, longish, short stories, and an interesting foreword.

The foreword is called Red Music , (a name chosen NOT due to the Soviets or communism, but because Skvorecky's teenage jazz band gave itself that name, to somewhat imitate a more popular local band called Blue Music).
In this foreword Skvorecky gives a bit of a personal view of jazz music during the German occupation of the Czech Republic, and then the Soviet one. He lists Nazi prohibitions against jazz music, which included:
#3 as to tempo, preference is also to be given to brisk compostions over slow ones (so-called blues); however, the pace must not exceed a certain degree of allegro, commensurate with the Aryan sense of discipline and moderation.
#8 plucking of the strings is prohibited since it is damaging to the instrument and detrimental to Aryan musicality.

In the foreword is also the amusing but melancholy note that as the Soviet functionaries took over from the German ones, they were, if possible, even prouder of their ignorance (page 15).
And this line on page 20 sums up, to an extent, both of the short stories in the book literature is forever blowing a horn, singing about youth when youth is irretrievably gone.
Skvorecky's teen years in the Czech republic included the horror of WWII and the Nazi occupation of his homeland, and then, the shift to the cold war and the Soviet occupation of his homeland. If not ruined, his youth was definitely less free and far more traumatic than those of the Canadian youth he would teach when he became a professor in Canada - youth who he describes in his book Engineer of Human Souls.

The first story is Emoke.
The title refers to the Hungarian girl named Emoke, who is courted by two men during a melancholy vacation retreat at a backwoods Czech recreation center, during the Russian occupation of the Czech Republic.
While there is a great deal of discussion about women, and men, and men as physical beings, and why Emoke doesn't want this sort of man anymore, for me the memorable part of the story is Skvorecky's utter rage at the ignorant but power-wielding functionaries in the Czech republic, who have given up their free-will and their souls to bury their head in the sands as they enforce the will of the Party leadership.
[submen who] assert the absolute priority of their bellies, their imagined (but to them indisputable) rights, and broadcast their own inanity in speeches about their infallibility, always ready to judge others, to condemn others, not for an instant doubting their own perfection, not for a moment contemplating the meaning of their own existence (page 68).

The second short story is The Bass Saxophone.
This one is set during the war and during the German occupation of the Czech Republic.
Skvorecky's teenaged male narrator ends up sitting in with a sad german band, filling in for their sick sax player, and against all good judgement (he could be branded a traitor for this, by his fellow hometown Czechs), playing in this german band for local german dignataries.
This is the premise, but really, this is a non-stop stream of consciousness Alan Ginsberg "howl" at the sadness of the times and the sadness of everyone during these times. While referencing (everything!) but also the various sites of the holocaust, Skvorecky also takes a few moments to show pity for the German boy who liked his sister and wrote love poetry for her by the river, and then disappeared, surely to die on the eastern front buried under the snow and under the crushing weight of the Soviet advance.
... and suddenly I saw myself among those specters, how terrible it all was; a sharp, pointed, cruel instant of realization: how I had been led into this stuffy, inhuman failure of a world, a soft baby woven of a dream; how the dream kept breaking through, but not a grandiose dream at all, a pathological dream of helplessness and incapacity, marked by illness, girls' derisive pointed laughter, lack of talent, lonely afternoons at the movies, nightmares, night fears; how it will all end someday, how it will all collapse (page 120).

"literature is singing about youth" - i more and more believe that we can't forget, in 2025, what life under an authoritarian regime can be like. How they will try to control you all the way down to what time signatures you can use in your highschool jazz band. Skvorecky's stories here are both a hymn to his youth in difficult times, and a warning call for us, to beware of what it means to bow to, and serve, only The Party.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

As part of my goal to read more Czech books this year, I finally picked up The Bass Saxophone, which I've owned for several years now and never gotten around to reading.

"To me literature is forever blowing a horn, singing about youth when youth is irretrievably gone, singing about your homeland when in the schizophrenia of the times you find yourself in a land that lies over the ocean, a land -- no matter how hospitable or friendly -- where your heart is not, because you landed on these shortes too late." (p. 29)

Škvkorecký writes well, as we can see. He is, however, still a Czech male writer, and as such still susceptible to 1) very long sentences and 2) just some of the most male gaze-y things I've ever read. (Although, to be fair, I shouldn't blame Czech male writers for this when I've read things that make me equally uncomfortable by Czech women. Just not quite as consistently.)

But I have good news! In this collection of two novellas, the first, "Emoke," is about a bunch of men at a sort of vacation "resort" in communist Czechoslovakia all trying to win over a Hungarian girl, a girl who is not painted by this same brush. I don't want to get too excited, it's not a super strong portrayal, and it's a ways from feminist, but the male gaze here is intentionally collected and concentrated in the form of a sloppy teacher.

"He disgusted me, for all the hygiene of his clean underwear, because the grime of his soul couldn't be aired out of his jockey shorts, his trousers or his shirt; he wasn't even human, just living breathing filth, an egotist, a lecher, an idiot, an enemy." (p. 83)

Ultimately I really liked this story (although, yes, I am concerned that I have now read not one but two Czech books about male teachers lusting after much younger women at this level...). I liked the main character and the girl, but more than that I liked the tension and the internal dialogue that was the majority of the story. The reality of the fact that it was the thrill of the chase. Even the ending was well done.

The second, titular story, is a much wilder ride. I found it less engaging, and partially by bad luck, I ended up reading the first story on the weekend and the second in tiny chunks here and there throughout a busy week. That can't have helped. But from the very beginning, though I loved the narrator's fascination with the artifact of the bass saxophone, I found it hard to understand what he was thinking as he encountered something of a traveling freak show - even now as I write this I'm not sure I understood the basic outline of the story. To keep it brief, I will just say that this story is very surreal, and that I liked it much more for the stretches of prose about jazz than for the plot, which was quite a contrast to the first story.

At the end of the day: I will read more books by Škvkorecký, if I can get my hands on them.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book containing two novellas by a Czech author seems perfect to follow up all the history I've read lately. The first, Emoke, is told by a man who ostensibly falls head over heels for a woman he meets on vacation, but she is far too fixated on some metaphysical journey she's on. He tries again and again, and eventually settles for getting revenge on his fellow supplicant at her alter. The second, The Bass Saxophone, is set during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, and concerns a young fan of American jazz who encounters a Fellini-esque troop of musicians who recruit him to play the titular instrument (which I've never seen in person, and which is rare to the point of invisibility on all the records I've heard) during a concert for Germans only. Unpacking Skvorecky's love of long, intricately assembled sentences takes a little effort, but both stories are worth the effort. The Bass Saxophone, especially, does a great job of mixing the oppressions of the Nazis with hints of the same by the Communists and plenty of dreams of an America expressed exclusively in its musical creativity.

[Jitka Prokop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Psychologically I like 'My fair Lady' story, but the Legend of Emöke is so - sometimes it feels 'brutally' - sad but true, real; as Škvorecky prose usually is. Especially this story, a type of woman-man momentary but deep episode, unfulfilled relationship, with differences in personal backgrounds, sharing certain essence in precious moments. Their subtle and cultivated interactions are in contrast to a figure of uncivil, envious teacher who does not have such capacities and intelligence as the main character Danny. So he is naturally confronted with his limits, and he does not behave nicely.
The piece obviously speaks to non-Czechs, too. Context of time is there, but it does not play so significant role.
Though very funny parts in the train are, maybe, more specific, with individual characters of vacationists going back from their holiday.

[David Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two novellas, the title one being a curious story of a young man called in to play saxophone in a slightly surreal jazz band, for an audience of German officers in occupied Czechoslovakia. The other, "Emöke", is about a young philosopher who falls in love with a beautiful but distant young woman at a vacation camp, and fights for her affections with an ignorant schoolteacher. Neither is very easy to read, due to the author's very long, meandering sentences, sometimes a page or more in length, which take a lot of concentration. There is an interesting foreword essay, "Red Music", on the role of jazz music under the Nazi and Communist regimes in Czechoslovakia.

[Dale · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this. Really, I wanted to. But alas, I did not. The best part was in the preface where he recited the rules of the Nazi dance bands and how they should attempt to substitute violoncellos for saxophones where ever possible. You can bet I played my horn for a bit after reading that.

[Stanislava · Rating 3 out of 5]

they are two stories,each of them character is young man who likes jazz. one is under fashist rules and one is under kominist rules .It is not a book for lazy summer beach day. I did like it.

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kerouac-y like prose but not adding up to enough

[una · Rating 4 out of 5]

али крај....

[Donald Schopflocher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two novellas soaked with irony, surreal imagery, immediacy. Evokes the contradictory totalitarian horrors and musical escapes of Czech youth under the yoke first of Naziism, then of Communism.

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

two novellas from Czech Josef Škvorecký - Emoke from 63 (set during Communist rule) and The Bass Saxophone from 67 (set during Nazi occupation) published by Ecco in 94. never read introductions before the main book but this time I should have as it's by Škvorecký himself, entitled 'Red Music', and it contextualises the next two works - oppressive regimes v artistic freedom, writing, jazz. Emoke is the stronger work - an insight into life at the time, set in a kind of state holiday camp. i had trouble distinguishing author from narrator here - liberal but seemingly conservative about sex? and of course how can we know what Škvorecký has included just to appease the state? tho the characters, dialogue and emotions really resonate - its a great piece. The Bass Saxophone starts very intriguingly but becomes repetitive and slightly grotesque - which may be intentional. in both novellas and the excellent introduction essay you will find all that classic plaintive jazz writing as well as the element of resisting oppression not with anger but resignation that it wont work but there's nothing else you can do

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

These two novellas illuminate two brief encounters with sympathy and humor. In the first, Emöke, the narrator describes a week-long visit to a sort of communist vacation camp, where he meets the titular character, a young woman with a sad background and a fervent belief in a better spiritual world, whom he briefly becomes close to before they are separated by the hard truths of circumstance and desire. In the second, the narrator is roped into playing with a concert ensemble of freaks for an-all German audience during WWII. In both, Škvorecký's elaborate sentences precisely detail complicated emotional and political situations, and how compassion can arise amongst, and perhaps change, very different people.

[Диляна Георгиева · Rating 4 out of 5]

Шкорецки огъва езика като джаз импровизация с неочаквани синкопи, които очароват.
Втората световна война през очите на един ариец и историите на неговите приятели евереи. Авторът опасно жонглира с читателската емоция, в лекотата на езика си в миг пробожда до кокал - буквално. Разказите преливат - различни - един в друг, водени от нишката на неизменния джем сешън с толкова тъжния глас на бассаксофона.

[Drahcir10001 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Striking.

[Jan Moens · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I didn't really enjoy reading this, I took a step back from my personal experience midway, and finally understood something about writing and reading and personality.