Skončilo to u Adama

by Sarah Patricia Condor


Formats

Softcover
$12.95
Softcover
$12.95

Book Details

Language :
Publication Date : 5/6/2010

Format : Softcover
Dimensions : 6x9
Page Count : 148
ISBN : 9781450225281

About the Book

I wrote this book when I was seventeen, shortly after the communists caught me crossing the Czech-Austrian border, trying to get away from behind the proverbial Iron Curtain. At the time, there was no War on Terror, and even if there had been, I probably would not have known about it… I was just a child – eager to experience Zephyr’s unbounded joy, singing my own Ode, wondering at daff odils… though puzzled not by the characters on a Grecian urn but by the rigid, stale, and spineless “character” of those alive, those around me. It is not human hands that build walls, but human mind – I concluded then, and wrote this book: a brief story about the end of the world. It came to me in a fl ash while I was sitting on a cold stone slab in a communist prison cell. After a strip-down body-cavity search, several hours of interrogation, staring into the muzzles of two shotguns pointing at me from each corner of a cold room, spotlight in my face… it felt like the world had pretty much ended for me. What a disaster – I could have represented “my” country in the Olympics! “Is this how you pay back to your generous motherland for giving you the privilege of the highest degree? – the privilege of being among the few selected, best sportsmen and women of this country, to enjoy the perks and privileges that working-class people have to work hard every day to earn? – to earn for you? – you live on their backs! – and what? – is this your ‘thank you’?!” the Chief of Bratislava Secret Police spoke to me in a heavy tone in his offi ce. I can still see myself staring out of the window, trying to look into the man’s eyes – they were dark, full, flaring eyes, unpredictable Turkish eyes… and I was but a helpless beetle, one of Kafka’s caricatures, waiting to be squashed… Still, I believe, the topic of this book – a small boy who is the only person alive (or so he thinks) who survived a nuclear catastrophe, travelling through the desert of human civilization, desperately trying to cross the mountains to reach the ocean… is a solid allegory, which stands on firmer ground than would a simple biblical re-creation.


About the Author

Sarah Patricia Condor, vlastním jménem Sarah Fridoline Fisher, je americká spisovatelka, která vyrostla ve Slezkých vršinách Severní Moravy. V sedmnácti letetech emigrovala do Velké Británie, kde studovala filosofii a politické vědy na University College London a London School of Economics and Political Science. Posléze se vrátila do Čech aby dokončila Ph.D na Filosofické fakultě Univerzity Karlovy. Sarah Fisher je aktivní členkou Právní komory státu Kalifornie, doživotní členkou společnosti Mensa, Einsteinovy Společnosti, American Lingvistic Society, American Association for Justice, a American Bar Association. V Evropě byla vydána její následující díla: sbírky básní Return to Sender (1997), 69 with God (1999), Meditations (1998), Ways (1999), Chasing Time (2000), Bloudění (1999), Hasta La Vista Smailing Fejs (1999), Otvírání studánek (2000), množství povídek, jakož i romány Escape a Marianna. Sarah Fisher žije v Los Angeles.