From Publishers Weekly
Just before Skvorecky turned 70, his friends urged him to write his memoirs. He decided instead to publish this collection of short stories, in which "nearly everything worth telling," as he writes in his preface, is present in one form or another. Taken together, the 24 tales work as both biography and history, tracking the literary life of one of the former Czechoslovakia's premier writers and the fate of his country under Nazi rule and Communist repression. The initial stories, which go by such self-explanatory titles as "How My Literary Career Began," "My Uncle Kohn" and "My Teacher, Mr. Katz," offer brief snapshots of the author's early years, and the specter of Nazism constantly hovers in the background as various characters are spirited away to the concentration camps. The most effective items in the collections are the longer, mid-career entries: "The End of Bull M cha" is an unusual look at political repression, in which a former jazz musician is thrown out of a club for his outrageous jitterbug dancing, while "Spectator on a February Night" tracks the chaos that occurs when Prague's left-wing journalists are forced to leave the country during the 1968 student demonstrations. The romantically oriented stories are a bit muddled by comparison, and a couple of the late-career stories that revolve around Skvorecky's teaching career are pedantic and ineffective. Skvorecky displays the tongue-in-cheek irony that is common to many Eastern European writers, but his unique compassion, humanism and wisdom in the face of relentless, unspeakable political horror makes him consistently engaging and intriguing. This collection should serve as both a summary and a point of entry for readers who wish to explore the shorter works of one of the finest international writers of his generation.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Skvorecky (Dvorak in Love, etc.) has lived through some of the most egregious times in European history. In this semiautobiographical collection of stories, he recalls his life: his childhood during the brief First Republic; adolescence under Nazi occupation; adulthood in the Communist era; and finally middle age as an expatriate in Canada. The author paints indelible portraits of himself and his friends, young men struggling with their sexuality while doing battle for freedom of expression. In "My Teacher Mr. Katz," a boy observes the Nazis' increasing humiliation of the Jews in his community until they are finally loaded on a train for the camps. "The End of Bull M cha" is the portrait of a jazz lover's last defiant jitterbug under the Communist regime, and "Filthy Cruel World" is a heartbreaking portrait of disaffected youths, unable to commit to each other or to love. These cynical, often grim stories oppose the charmingly na‹ve pictures of the author's childhood and amused snapshots of his Canadian life. This portrait of the 20th century by one of its finest authors belongs in all libraries. Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Review
“Pick up Josef Skvorecky’s When Eve Was Naked and, I promise, you will be enriched, enlightened, entertained and more...I can’t say enough about the delights of this volume. It’s wise, it’s witty, it’s poignant, it’s wry.” —The Washington Post
“The stories read to some extent like a diary, capturing an emotional landscape in lucid detail...A delight only Skvorecky could write.” —The New York Times Book Review
“The twenty-four stories in this collection are bubbles in time, verbal dioramas depicting a benign quality (innocence, comfort or just amiable confusion) destined for extinction. Refreshingly, Skvorecky...handles the heaviness of his material with a feather touch.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Book Description
This autobiography in stories takes us through a most remarkable life, from the innocence of prewar Prague through the horrors of the Nazi occupation and World War II. In the title story, narrated by Skvorecky’s alter-ego Danny Smiricky, seven-year-old Danny falls in love for the first time; at sixteen he hides in a railway station and watches as his Jewish teacher is herded onto a train and taken away; and in 1968, as Russian tanks rolled into Prague, vSkvoreck´y flees Czechoslovakia, taking Danny with him. In the collection’s final stories, Danny begins his tenure as Professor Smiricky at a Canadian university and attempts to come to terms with the politically innocent and self-centered youth that flock to his courses.
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Czech
About the Author
Josef Skvorecky is the author of The Bass Saxophone and The Engineer of Human Souls, among other works. He is the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and Canada’s Governor General’s Award. He lives in Toronto, Ontario, and Venice, Florida.
When Eve Was Naked: Stories of a Life's Journey FROM THE PUBLISHER
The most comprehensive collection to date of Josef Skvorecky's short fiction, When Eve Was Naked is a wonderful introduction to a writer internationally acclaimed for his passion, his wry humor, his insight into human and political frailty, and his inimitable style. These semiautobiographical stories, many narrated by Skvorecky's beloved fictional alter ego -- the tenderhearted cynic, Danny Smiricky -- together form a portrait of the author's own life, following the sweep of the twentieth century and bearing witness to some of its most eventful and tragic times: from bittersweet memories of prewar Prague, to the brutality of Nazi occupation and the terror of World War II, to the arrival of Russian tanks in Czechoslovakia and Skvorecky's enforced exile abroad. Masterfully written, humorous, and wise, When Eve Was Naked is a remarkably revealing work of fiction by one of our most important writers.
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