Kloktat dehet

(The Devil’s Workshop)

Book of the Year 2005

About the Book
Original TitleKloktat dehet práce
First Published2005
PublisherTorst, Prague
Pages284
Rights Sold
The NetherlandsAmbo Anthos – Amsterdam
GermanySuhrkamp – Berlin
HungaryKalligram – Budapest
PolandWAB – Warsaw
Spain Lengua de Trapo – Madrid
NorwayBokvennen – Oslo
FranceNoir sur Blanc – Paris
ItalyEinaudi – Turin
Turkey Önce Kitap – Istanbul
United KingdomPortobello Books – London
IsraelAchuzat Bayit – Tel Aviv
RomaniaEditura Art – Bucharest
North MacedoniaAntolog – Skopje

‘If anyone lied that they hadn’t stolen a matchbox, they had to gargle soapy tar-water […] . We had to gargle tar for other lies as well.’ This is the punishment inflicted on the orphans ‘scum, bastards, psychopaths, sons of whores and foreigners’ in the Home. These words set the tone for a formidable adventure of the boy Ilya, in which many events alternate at an increasing, murderous pace. It is a quest for liberation reminiscent of playing a computer game. By Ilja’s hand, we look for a way out: we grope around, take side paths, investigate, get trained, meet different character actors, learn from them and carry out assignments. This is how we develop our traits to be able to go to the next level. And when Ilja finally opens the right door or fatal door, the game only breaks loose in full force. The game gets fiercer, more dangerous, becomes a phantasmagoria and, as is common in action games, ends in an apocalypse, allowing Ilja to finally free himself. The essence of such a game is not to die, and that is what Gargling with Tar is about. It is about survival, about the instinct for self-preservation at any cost and under any circumstance. And what then is good and evil, and what is guilt?

The story is set against the post-war history of Czechoslovakia. The backdrop is communist rule and the Prague Spring, and the pages are populated by gypsies, nuns, communists, villagers, and even circus performers. The style is unpolished, raw and poetic and penetrates to the bone. Topol is an author who writes as he breathes, and he lets his imagination run wild in this book without becoming implausible, or as Ilya writes on the last page: ‘I’ve written down the truth about everything I’ve been through. I’ve written about the war of the Czechs and Slovaks with the armies of the five states, and it’s all true. There isn’t enough tar water in the world for me to gargle if I told a single lie.’

As the acrobat says, ‘up this Czech end of shit creek’, those in the middle have to survive. Few Czech novelists have tackled 1968 head-on. Topol does so with bracing irreverence as well as pity”

— The Independent

“Re-enactment of a trauma: Czech writer Jáchym Topol presents the suppression of the Prague Spring as a provincial farce – the historical drama as absurd theatre.”

— Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“Definitely, Topol expresses both the continuity and originality of Czech literature. Weird and clever, he is both. ”

— De Volkskrant

Translations