My First Loves

New York. 1988. Harper & Row. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0060158662. Translated from the Czech by Ewald Osers. 165 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Julie Metz. keywords: Europe Czech Literature Translated Eastern Europe World Literature. DESCRIPTION - A collection of four stories about love, obsession, and disillusionment, My First Loves is banned in the author's native Czechoslovakia, as are all his works. Each of these sensuous and lyrical stories portrays a different stage in the young narrator's emotional life, while at the same time revealing the profound political and social changes in Czechoslovakia since the Second World War. As the narrator travels from a difficult childhood in a Czech ghetto through student days under a Communist regime and finally into the young adulthood of an aspiring writer, the women who capture his imagination and awaken his desire are inextricably linked to the ideas that obsess him. ‘Miriam,' the story of a young girl in a ghetto soup kitchen who secretly gives the narrator more than his allotted share of precious milk, opens with a description of the stolen food at his aunt's engagement party and closes with that aunt and her new husband being sent to a concentration camp. In ‘The Truth Game,' the hero wrestles with a duplicitous Communist Party, while remaining emotionally entangled with an exciting woman who lies to him constantly, unpredictably, and for no apparent reason. Inaccessibility fuels the young man's passion - a tightrope walker is his ultimate symbol of desire - but in the end he can't avoid the dangerous reality of adult, reciprocated love. An immensely appealing collection of stories with a quirky sense of humor and a light touch when evoking even the most intimate feelings of coming of age, MY FIRST LOVES introduces an original and important voice in contemporary Eastern European fiction. inventory #9226.…