Product Description In Europe, taking a walk is a cultural phenomenon having an almost mystical import. It connects physical activity with meditation, silence within amid the tumult without. Taking its cue both from Joyce's Ulysses and Hrabal's stream of anecdote, Of Kids & Parents is about a father and son taking a walk through Prague, over the course of which, and in the pubs and bars they stop into, their personal lives are revealed as entwined with the past sixty years of upheaval in their corner of Europe. One's small history is inseparable from the large History that is played out on the world's stage: families are uprooted, relationships fail, and still life goes on as it always does. Hakl's genius is his ability to mesh the two into a seamless flow of dialogue. As the father tells his son: "Nothing's been new in this world for more than two billion years, it's all just variations on the same theme of carbon, hydrogen, helium, and nitrogen." The point being that even though Prague over the course of a century has experienced monarchy, democracy, fascism, communism, and democratic capitalism once again, as wars, putsches, and revolutions have come and gone, what really has changed? The novel was awarded the Magnesia Litera Book of the Year in 2002 and is currently being made into a feature film due for release in 2008. From Booklist At the end of the twentieth century, an elderly father and his middle-aged son walk the streets of Prague, stopping for one, or two, or more beers or juniper brandies en route. A retired scientist and a writer, respectively, they’re easy with one another’s expert interjections into a colloquy consisting of stories they’ve lived or heard that could be any Czech’s; some of them could be anyone’s, including the most outlandish, an insidious anecdote about urban cannibalism. Since the father grew up in World War II Croatia, where the Ustasi rather than the Nazis almost killed him, and the son turned 10 when Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring of 1968, they know what living in something close to hell is like, and graveyard humor courses through their palaver. At the end of their ramble, the son puts his father into a cab, and his nagging conscience makes him wonder how many more such outings there will be. Skittishly insouciant, direly funny, this is a small, Waiting for Godot-ish gem. --Ray Olson Review "This virile sentimentality is quite exceptional in contemporary art and is ultimately the real core of Hakl's writing, though at first glance it might seem that this core has been fragmented into anecdotes." -- Jiri Penas, Tyden "To my mind, Emil Hakl is one of the more interesting Czech writers today." -- Jan Culik, Britska listy From the Publisher Currently being translated into most European languages, the novel was awarded a Magnesia Litera Book of the Year prize in 2003 and has been made into a recently released feature film. Shortlisted for the 2009 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize Voted one of the 7 best books of 2008 by RALPH magazine About the Author Emil Hakl was born in Prague in 1958. A graduate of the Jaroslav Jezek Conservatorium, he worked at a number of manual-labor jobs under the communist regime. From 1996 to 2000 he worked as a copywriter for an advertising agency, after which he devoted himself to literature, publishing a volume of poetry, three novels, and two collections of short stories since, as well as regularly contributing reviews and essays to all the main literary publications. Hakl's work has started to appear in anthologies and magazines in English, German, and French, including Decapolis: Tales from 10 Cities. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Why the crew of the Kursk couldn't escape on its own "For goodness' sake, why do you of all people always ask what's new?" Father said in time to his strides. "That's such a difficult question, in fact it's the most difficult of all! Now, if you had asked me how I am, th