You can't break ice by sponge

Kniha je ke koupi pouze na Amazonu jako ebook.

The texts are funny and sweet, but also raw and harsh, as if the author had cut them with a diamond.

The author's lively and critical view of the world and contemporary life, of society at that time and today is connected not only with humor, but also with irony and exaggeration. The topics and problems that the book criticizes are diverse, but always connected with people who lived or live in the time that the author writes about.

This book describes the level of social relations, social life, political situation, but also culture, customs and habits associated with the time that this book is about.

It is a satirical and ironic view of our pre-war times, both inglorious and wonderful, times slightly more distant, recent and the present.

From memories of the times when our comrades determined for us what was right and what was wrong, to today through the eyes of the narrator Karel Brdi and his grandmother.

The author, with a suitable combination of comic and mockery, follows the greats of satire who were in Czech literature, such as Karel Havlíček Borovský and his Tyrolean Elegies, or King Vávra, or The Baptism of Saint Vladimir. Also, for example, the world-famous author Jaroslav Hašek and his novel The Fates of the Good Soldier Švejk. We must not forget the authors Zdeněk Jirotka, Josef Škvorecký and Karel Poláček.

In this book, Vladislav Hlavsa has taken on the role of a writer who continues to write Czech satire with determination and skill that leaves no doubt that Czech satire still has something to say to readers and has worthy successors to the aforementioned greats of world literature.

Kniha je ke koupi pouze na Amazonu jako ebook.

I go into my grandmother's house and watch her rummage through a stack of photos.
“Hi grandma, what are you doing?”
"Hi, Karl. But here on my mobile phone, in the manual, it says that I can put my photo there. So I'm looking for one. How about this one?"
"It's your wedding photo. I wouldn't put it there. But you can take a picture now. Currently."
"Yeah, like I'd rush to the barber and then to the camera."
"But no. You can take a picture with that phone. By yourself. Or I'll take a picture of you."
"Just over my dead body. Don't you want me to put on an apron and a headscarf?"
"Why not? Not everyone has that," I laughed.
"I'm not going to cheat you," Grandma laughed.
"Hey grandma, what about Marus, didn't her birthday happen to be in June?"
"She used to, but you know that. She's old now and every time she comes, she complains that everything hurts and that she's going to die soon. And that we still have to celebrate her birthday with her. Well, we celebrate it. Almost every month. Sometimes even twice. At least it's fun."
"Well, that's nice..." I sighed.
"Yeah, and Marus is telling you that you're going to get kicked in the ass again, for Australia."
"Again?" I raised my eyebrows in surprise.
"Don't you remember when she beat your ass when you were five? You screamed like you were being stabbed. Grandpa had to run out and snatch you from her clutches."
"Please, what have I done?"
"But, grandpa bought rat poison to put in the apiary and the shed. That's what the granules were like back then. Pink. But you can't remember that. You were five years old. Grandpa hid them in the garage, but you found them. You were throwing them over the fence into Marus's yard.
Her stupid hens took it all down. And they pecked. Except the rooster, he was sulking in the coop or something.
You poisoned twenty of her chickens. Marus ran out into the yard, clapped her hands and started cursing. She reached over the fence, pulled you out, threw you over her knee and cut.
The pellets were still flying out of your sweatpants pocket with every blow to your ass.
Grandpa rushed in and literally had to snatch you from Mařek.
In the end, he bought her thirty chickens as a replacement anyway. So that she would at least have eggs. But you knew Grandpa, he bought twenty-six roosters and four hens.
Marus shouted even more. You know, so many roosters for four hens.
The roosters completely killed them and the hens stopped laying eggs altogether. They wouldn't even leave the coop.
In the summer, Marus sold it all out and they had chicken soup the whole holiday. Oh, and she started raising rabbits.”
"I don't believe it, Grandma."
"Just wait until Marus comes. She will confirm it for you."
"You said he had multiple sclerosis and couldn't remember anything."
"Yeah, but she remembers you very well. It hasn't left her mind. Like a lot of her neighbors, anyway. You were quite a number. And you stuck with it."
"I'll wait for that. But first the cell phone, grandma."
"Well, I can call now..."
“I know… and hang up too.”
"Don't be rude, Karl. You'd better tell me what this is, the ice cream sundae?"
"What cup? It's voice dialing. You say the name out loud and the phone dials it."
"But go, you brat."
"But you have to put the contacts under your name, for example Marus, Blazena, Anka, Karl, so you don't get confused."
"Ah, that's good. And what's that eye that keeps blinking?"
"Well, that's a camera."
I sat with my grandmother for almost two hours and even for her age she learned to use her mobile phone quite quickly. She gave me some sausages again. But before I could finish them, Marus came. She was laughing right from the door.
"Hey, Kajík, how are you, you little snot?"
"Hello, Mrs. Hájková, how are you? How are you?"
"I'm probably going to die soon, so I'm going to have a drink here at Barča. Yeah, I'm bringing you a photo of the gendarmes. I think your grandfather is there."
Grandma took the photo, looked at it for a moment, and then started laughing.
"Oh yeah, I know. Mine's there. In the middle here. Look, Karl."
"Grandma, what is it? Grandpa has never been to the gendarmerie, and besides, he probably wouldn't have had time to do it at his age."
"Of course not. Back in the 1950s, a distinguished director was making a film here at the factory about a strike and the strikebreakers who were put on a train and taken somewhere."
It was supposed to take place in the First Republic. Evil capitalism, you know.
The director came to the factory and wanted some real guys to play the gendarmes. He even chose a grandfather. Back then, it was two sausages, a beer, and fifty crowns a day.
They were supposed to film it at the train station below the factory.
The gendarmes were just supposed to walk along the train and watch out for people, like.
Everything was filmed, everyone took pictures. The filmmakers packed up and left.
But they forgot about the group of gendarmes who wanted to take a picture behind the station.
In uniforms and with flintlocks.