The Lesser Histories Av Jan Zabrana

The first collection of poetry in English by an acclaimed twentieth-century Czech writer. From the eighth floor of a tower block in Central Europe, Jan Zábrana surveyed the twentieth century. He had been exiled from his own life by Communism. His parents were imprisoned, their health was broken, and he was not allowed to study languages in college. Refusing both to rebel outright or to cave in, he thought of himself as a dead man walking. ¿To all those who keep asking me to do things for them, I sometimes feel like saying: `But I¿m dead. I died long ago. Why do you keep treating me as if I were one of the living?¿¿ ¿ Yet during some of Europe¿s most difficult years, he wrote The Lesser Histories, a collection of sixty-four sonnets that range through themes of age, sex, and political repression¿a radiant testament to his times. The lines are emptied both of personal pathos and political stridency. Often Zábrana¿s own voice segues into those of poets he had translated over the years, lea