To deal with the random political oppression,Czech writers have developed a rich tradition of humour, the absurd and the surreal. The great advantage was to live in a society that valued the written word and made a privileged place for it in the culture. The final irony is that now after the defeat of Communism by the ?free? market, the writer?s place is more peripheral than ever before, more dependent upon the whims of the cultural consumer. This ground-breaking anthology spans the last four decades of Czech history and brings together a rich variety of writers who together capture this turbulent period.