Foreign Editions
Hungary
Jelenkor
Poland
Instytut Mikołowski
This collection by Petr Hruška is full of restlessness, yet its attention does not flit about. On the contrary. This is a slow kind of disquiet: it has its heft and its edges. It grows heavy, it jars, it gets under the skin. Life’s journey is past the midway point; important realisations, actions, twists, turns, and mistakes are behind us, but the world and life keep pressing upon us. Yet even this pressure grows old, heavy, and edgy—it is so familiar, and yet sometimes impossible to comprehend.
Do we still understand ourselves, our language, each other—or at least, even slightly, ourselves? Or have we been affected by a strange kind of muteness, like the things, the city, and the whole world around us? Have we become unable to utter a sensible word, a sentence? The edges of the world grow rough and chipped, thumbed beyond recognition. Somehow, however, we must get by. In this city called Ostrava, we need to make our own mournful, stubborn fuel to survive. In this ungainly, arduous night, while decent folk sleep through disaster, the poet is besieged by his insomnia. Somebody has to keep watch until the end. – Jan Štolba
Published in 2013 by Host Publishers in the Czech Republic.
60 pages / 15 x 18 cm
