Prague a couple of weeks before the communist putsch of February 1948. The young intellectual Erik Brunner, an opportunistic member of the communist party and working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is summoned to the Ministry of Interior. He is instructed to find Pavel Král, an old acquaintance of him and the former lover of his wife Olga. As Josef K. from Kafka Erik gets entangled in a confusing game between the American and Czech secret services during the communist coup.

In this novel Hostovský catches the dark atmosphere of Prague in these days of turmoil, full of fear, conspiracies and mistrust. He pushes the existentialist nature of his work to a new height, surely influenced by Franz Kafka and Graham Greene, though turning it into something new and original. A real classic.

The first edition was the Danish translation in 1951, followed by the English translation at Viking Press in New York in 1952. The Czech original was published by friends of the author in Toronto, Canada. It was not until 1994 that an official edition appeared in the Czech Republic itself.

Graham Greene, a great admirer of Hostovský’s work, remembers his encounter with him in connection with this novel Missing: “My first meeting with Egon Hostovský had some of the flavour of his own works”, Graham Greene wrote in 1958, “a complex flavour of black humour, melodrama and despair. It was in Prague during the week of the Communist Revolution. Hostovský came into my hotel room straight from a last meeting at his Foreign Office with his beloved chief Masaryk – who was to suffer a defenestration a few days later. We sat on the bed finishing my bottle of Scotch whisky and the streets outside were noisy with processions of trade unionists, shouting away their freedom.”

“In ‘Missing’ Hostovský has written a vivid impression of the tension, conspiracy, terror and resignation of Prague just before and after the 1948 coup d’état.”

— The New York Times

“Mr. Hostovský has something to say, and he says it very well.”

— The Saturday Review

“It is a unique work in the Czech literary landscape because it focuses on the events of the communist coup in 1948 and features real political figures such as Jan Masaryk. As is customary with Hostovský, it is a very elaborate and gradual style of narration, where absurd moments give way to dramatic ones.”

— Respekt

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