Mr. Kafka: And Other Tales From the Time of the Cult

Preface

The stories in this book are an expression of a particular period referred to as “the time of the cult of personality.” Anyone seeking to find in this book mere condemnation, a thumbs-down, would be mistaken. During this period, I was living with people who felt, or knew, that every era carries in its womb a child in whom one may not only place one’s hopes, but through whom and with whom it would be possible to go on living. They were people who had not forgotten the fundamental house rules of human coexistence and who were heroes if only because they had not succumbed to semantic confusion, but were able to call things and events by their real names and recognize them for what they were.

Thus this book is an expression not only of my own evolution, but of a part of society’s evolution as well, a society I live in and that, like me, wishes to live in habitations where humor and the possibility of metaphysical escape reign supreme.

BOHUMIL HRABAL, 1965