Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Hours and the Minutes

The Hours and the Minutes

Short, David
Chitnis, Rajendra A.
Bednár, Alfonz

Paperback

Series: Modern Slovak Classics

General FictionHistorical Fiction

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 8024658968
ISBN13: 9788024658964
Publisher: Karolinum Press, Charles University
Published: Aug 25 2025
Pages: 480
Weight: 1.32
Height: 1.42 Width: 5.12 Depth: 7.48
Language: English
With their courageous and engaging critique of Communism in the 1950s, these critically acclaimed Slovak classics demask one of the founding myths of modern Slovakia.

The Hours and The Minutes was first published in Bratislava in 1956, the year of Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech, in which the Soviet leader formally acknowledged Stalin's tyranny and opened the way for political reform throughout the Eastern Bloc. Alfonz Bednár's writing was one of the first free of nationalist and communist propaganda, rejecting earlier ideologization of life by both the fascist right and Stalinist left and finding more empathetic ways to explore the complexity of human experience. His novellas defy traditional heroic depictions and portray the human individual, his relations, and morality as the subject of history rather than a utopian, collectivist ideology.

In these five novellas, Bednár is preoccupied with the insensitive, even inhuman, rootless, and amoral modernity that the war and Communist Party import into traditional Slovak life. The destruction of the traditional Slovak countryside during the twentieth century through modernization and urbanization, and with it a particular approach to life, forms his central theme. His spare, epic style and devotion to plot and dynamic narration render The Hours and The Minutes a genuine and gripping read.

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