Maybe we’re leaving

Jan Balabán

Each of us sometimes finds ourselves in a situation that suddenly unsecures everything that has been experienced so far, and an unknown world is opened up in front of man. And it is in such watershed moments that we find the heroes of Balabán’s short stories, Oldřich suffering from a morbid fear of birds, Edita leaving her husband and an abandoned lover, patients in an anti-eggtreatment and much more.

In these texts there is no nasparous writerly casualness with which to simply write about anything, in the hope that the author’s message to the reader will somehow be born of the upper words. But they also lack the same voicing oversymbolism that offers the author’s message some way ahead and makes the characters and plots just rigid allegories. Indeed, the people in Balabán’s stories “live for a while,” talk to each other, ask questions, and do not rush to catharsis, attentive to everyday events and images that can only become urgent signs. Signs that will help to know whether a person actually lived in his destiny— even for a while.

199 Kč