Home | Books By Year | Books from 1986
Love and Garbage
Buy Love and Garbage now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the book. And once you've experienced the book, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'Love and Garbage' (Czech: 'Lska a smet') is a 1986 novel by Czech writer Ivan Klma.
Publication
Banned from publishing in the Czechoslovakia while the country was under Soviet influence, but after the end of the cold war in 1989, the novel was rushed into print in his home country, selling over 100,000 copies.
Synopsis
The novel uses a first person narrative to explore the suffering and challenges of a dissident artist forced to be a trash collector in Communist Prague. In particular, the novel explores how different people are connected to each other through human experience. To prepare for writing the novel, Klima actually spent a few days in a street sweeper role.
Reception
The novel was the most successful of Klma's books. Though the review by Eva Hoffman in the New York Times was mixed, she concludes that the novel "affords the experience, rare in today's fiction, of being in the presence of a seasoned, measured perspective, and a mind that strives honestly to arrive at a wisdom sufficient to our common condition."
References
Further sources
* [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/04/12/a-conversation-in-prague/ A Reflection on the Novel by Philip Roth]
* [http://fresques.ina.fr/europe-des-cultures-en/fiche-media/Europe00200/interview-with-ivan-klima-regarding-love-and-garbage.html An Interview in French with Klma about the novel in 1992]
Category:Czech novels
Category:1986 novels
Category:Novels set in Prague
Buy Love and Garbage now from Amazon
<-- Return to books from 1986