The Little Town Where Time Stood Still and Cutting It Short

328 Pages·1993·4.543 MB·328\328

by  Bohumil Hrabal

T r r t
li ttl e
t o w n
w h e r e
t i m e
s t o o d
s t i l l
B O H U M I L H R A B A L
Wat c hed Trains
$23.00
I
n the 1930s Europe is tansoing to the tune of a new
age/ but in rural Czechoslovakia Maryska dances to a
rhythm all her own. In a town dominated by a somber
municipal brewery, she is a colorful and rather alarming
apparition speeding through the quiet village on her
bicycle, her long, tempestuous hair billowing behind
her. Not even her husband, Francin (the brewery
manager), can control her, as Maryska shocks the
populace with her scandalous behavior, and incurs the
disapproval of a proper little town that is blissfully
unaware of the cataclysmic world events into which
it is about to be engulfed.
As World War II draws to a close and communism
looms on the horizon, Maryska and her town appear to
have survived unscathed. But subtle changes begin to
appear —in Maryska and her family, and most notice­
ably at the brewery, where the new political order
creates tensions that tear through the social fabric of the
town in ways that Maryska in her wildest days could not
possibly have imagined.
The two linked narratives brought together in The
Little Town Where Time Stood Still comprise Bohumil
Hrabal's poignant and witty evocation of the passing of
an era and display a master writer at the height of his
powers as he creates, in an enchanting fictional work, an
elegy for a nation that is no more.
BOSTON
PUBLIC
LIBRARY

The L ittle Town
W here T ime Stood Still
By the same author
I Served the King of England
C losely W atched Trains
The D eath of M r B altisberger
Too Loud a Solitude
The L ittle Town
W here Time Stood Still
and
C utting It Short
Bohumil Hrabal
Translated from the Czech by James Naughton
Introduction by Josef Skvorecky
P A N T H E O N BOOKS NE W YORK
Cutting It Short
Copyright © 1976 by Bohumil Hrabal
Translation copyright © 1993 by James Naughton
The Little Town Where Time Stood Still
Copyright © 1973 by Bohumil Hrabal
Translation copyright © 1993 by James Naughton
Introduction copyright © 1993 by Josef èkvorecky
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
This translation originally published in Great Britain by Abacus, a
division of Little, Brown and Company (UK) Limited, London.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hrabal, Bohumil, 1914-
[Mèstecko, kde se zastavil cas. English]
The little town where time stood still I Bohumil Hrabal ; translated
from the Czechoslovakian by James Naughton ; introduction by
Josef èkvorecky.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-679-42225-0
I. Title.
PG5039.18.R2M3 1993
891.8'635-dc20 93-765
CIP
Manufactured in the United States of America
First American Edition
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
t r a n s l a t o r 's n o t e
Cutting It Short follows the text of the first
edition of Postfiziny as published by
Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, Prague, 1976.
Its sequel. The Little Town Where Time
Stood Still, follows the text of the author's
original 1973 typescript M^stedko, kde se
zastavil das, as used for the editions by
Odeon, Prague, 1991, Sixty-Eight Pub­
lishers, Toronto, 1989, and Comenius,
Innsbruck, 1978.