This hefty anthology includes 20 short stories and excerpts from novels by Czech writers who have emerged since the Prague Spring of 1968, and in many cases since the so-called ""Velvet Revolution"" of 1989. Fragmentation, surrealistic techniques, and social and political alienation dominate such striking pieces as Michal Viewegh's tongue-in-cheek portrayal of an artist whom the world is too much with (from Sightseers), Teresa Bouckova's wonderful novella about a well-meaning young woman's frustrated pursuit of political and romantic fulfillment (""Quail""), and--in the collection's best piece--Jiri Kratochvil's brainy, funny recounting of the unlikely success of ""the first erotic woman clown of Czech literature."" A few stories are thin and uninvolving, but there's a lot of first-rate work in this appealing volume--and good reason to anticipate even greater pleasures from future works by these authors.