Judge On Trial is Ivan Kl-ma's epic novel about those who stayed in Prague after 1968. When middle-aged judge Adam Kindl is asked not only to try a double murder case but is also expected to find the accused guilty it is his own shattered faith in the political system that is put on trial. To understand the crises he is experiencing in both his professional and personal life, Adam has to confront his own and his country's past which has been mis-shapen first by Nazism, then Stalinism, the false hope of the Prague Spring and the collaborationist regime that followed.

A novel of one desperate woman's hopes and desires set in contemporary Prague from "a literary gem who is too little appreciated in the West" (The Boston Globe). Divorced, approaching fifty, and mother to a rebellious fifteen-year-old, Kristyna is beginning to feel the strain of her bleak existence—until she finds a new sense of joy when she begins a love affair with a man fifteen years her junior But her escape into romance is far from complete. She worries about her daughter Jana, who has been cutting school, and may be using heroin—the latest plague on the city. And Kristyna's mother has forced her to accept the personal papers of her dead father, a tyrant whose Stalinist ideals she despised. At a crossroads in her life, she must find a way to put the past behind her and deal with the challenges of the present in a Czechoslovakia that is still trying to overcome years of communist oppression. In this Washington...

This short story collection spanning the celebrated Czech author's career is a "taxonomic survey of Eros . . . [by] a writer at the top of his form" (The Boston Globe). In these stories that span an acclaimed career from the 1960s to the present, Ivan Klima offers a vivid gallery of people searching for an escape in love: factory girls and assembly-line workers find respite from their daily grind in Walter Mitty-esque fantasies; a young woman finds herself on a honeymoon with a man she did not marry; a divorce-court judge loves the routines of his marriage in ways his mistress can't understand; and a young wife falls into a passionate affair with an elderly bookbinder crippled by war. Lovers for a Day is a book stamped with Klima's unique vision. With a personal history of a nation's evolution, this moving examination of our attempts to find freedom in love will demonstrate why Klima is considered by so many to be "a Czech genius"...

A brilliant and humane novel of ideas exploring the dynamics of love, adultery, and faith by a major figure in world literature. Pastor Daniel Vedra cares for his family and his congregation, ministers to prisoners, and is a sought-after commentator on the rapidly changing society of the Czech Republic. But when a beautiful stranger comes to hear him preach, Daniel soon finds himself falling in love with another man's wife. As his heart stirs, the order that once underpinned Daniel's life begins to unravel. And as a result, he stands to betray everything he has lived for: his family, his vocation, and his God. In the course of a year, Klima's moving, elegantly constructed novel paints "vivid portraits . . . through letters, diary entries, and everyday scenarios. . . . Many people will recognize a bit of themselves in this sad but stunning and insightful book" (Library Journal). A New York Times Notable Book, The Ultimate Intimacy is a...