Stanislav Moc
(1945) Novelist, author of novellas and short stories, translator of poetry
Author in exile, who has lived in Australia since 1968. His first works were published by the influential “exile” publishing houses Index in Cologne and ’68 Publishers in Toronto. Before his crucial work Czech Wake, he had published only one book in his home country.
Outstanding author in exile, who has surprised his readership with the maturity of his insight into the life of contemporary Czechs after thirty years of living outside the country.
Selected bibliography:
Upadlí vlastenci aneb Český wake (Czech Wake, novel, 2003)
This story with clearly autobiographical motifs starts in the late 1990’s, when members of the large Máca family gather at a mother’s funeral and start to recall and retell their fates, which have been twisted and stigmatised by living under a totalitarian regime. In this family, the author has managed to create a remarkable social sample of Czech society, including an emigrant, a former employee of the communist state police, a chemist, a graduate of a Moscow university and a window cleaner. The narrator of the story is the disabled and totally immobile Pepíček, who has been unable to talk or move without a wheelchair since he was an infant. The inability to move and talk has made him exempt from much of what goes on in “normal” society, though he is much better at observing and commenting on the life around him than anyone else.
Review:
“In the relatively small space of this novel, the author has succeeded in giving a critical view of the half-century of life deformed under dictatorships as seen by its disabled narrator. (...) The extraordinarily elaborate construction of the story of Czech Wake, its play with motifs, a fatality known from the great tragedies of literature and, on the other hand, its lightness, and free-flowing, sometimes playful storytelling make this novel, by a writer from the other side of the globe, one of the most remarkable works of contemporary Czech literature.”
Josef Škvorecký in his epilogue to the book
Notes:
The book has been translated into English (by Stanley Dalby), but yet not published in English. The manuscript of the translation can be obtained from the Petrov publishing house upon request. Extracts from the book have been translated into German (by Mirko Kraetsch).
Upadlí vlastenci aneb Český wake/Czech Wake
