"When Vladimír Páral burst upon the Czech literary scene in the mid-1960s …
he became almost overnight one of the country's most discussed writers
and has since then achieved a considerable reputation abroad. …
[His novels] are like whirlwinds, with fragments of real life spinning around
in what eventually emerge as meticulously organized patterns."—Times Literary Supplement
Vladimír Páral is the author of over two dozen novels, three of which have appeared in English translation, to great acclaim. He has been a very popular Czech literary novelist in his home country from the late 1960s until today. He lives in Marianské lázně, the spa town better known to us as Marienbad, but spent most of his adult life in Ústí nad Labem, the northwestern Czech town where his novels take place.
CATAPULT Translated by William Harkins. This twist on the Don Juan story looks at the attractions and difficulties of freedom. "Páral masterfully switches from farce to drama and back again, so that in the end we feel Jost's dilemma even as we're laughing at him." —New York Times Book Review
$10.95 paper, 240 pp., ISBN 0-945774-17-6. Also available as an e-book.
THE FOUR SONYAS Translated by William Harkins. "The ways in which The Four Sonyas . . . conceals its larger meaning just beneath the surface of the narration is wonderful to behold." —New York Newsday
$22.95 cloth, 391 pp., ISBN 0-945774-15-X. Also available as an e-book.
LOVERS & MURDERERS Translated by Craig Cravens. Another darkly humorous novel about what people will do to each other to make their dreams come horribly true.
$27 hardcover, 409 pp., ISBN 0-945774-52-4.
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