The Little Town Where Time Stood Still contains two linked narratives
by the incomparable Bohumil Hrabal, whom Milan Kundera has described as
"Czechoslovakia's greatest writer." "Cutting It Short" is set before
World War II in a small country town, and it relates the scandalizing
escapades of Maryska, the flamboyant wife of Francin, who manages the
local brewery. Maryska drinks. She rides a bicycle, letting her long
hair fly. She butchers pigs, frolics in blood, and leads on the local
butcher. She's a Madame Bovary without apologies driven to keep up with
the new fast-paced mechanized modern world that is obliterating whatever
sleepy pieties are left over from the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire.
"The Little Town Where Time Stood Still" is told by Maryska and
Francin's son and concerns the exploits of his Uncle Pepin, who holds
his own against the occupying Nazis but succumbs to silence as the new
post-World War II Communist order cements its colorless control over
daily life. Together, Hrabal's rousing and outrageous yarns stand as a
hilarious and heartbreaking tribute to the always imperiled sweetness of
lust, love, and life.