The novella The Golden Head is an adaptation of the novel Mongolský vlk – Gandan (The Mongolian Wolf – Gandan), a book that Topol wrote inspired by a stay in Mongolia at the end of the nineties. Not much is known about the content, because Topol up till now has refused to publish it. Only a small excerpt was translated and published in the Dutch literary magazine “Armada” under the title Gandan. It was not until 2005 when Topol published this novella.

A young man, a Czech ‘Hun’, meets an old blind man in the Gandan temple complex of the Mongolian capital UlaanBataar. The latter, in exchange for the necessary bottles of vodka, tells him his life story and that of his father. Both their lives have been scarred by communism. The father, a holy man of great standing, a lama, and administrator of Gandan, converted to communism and then died disillusioned. The son studied in Russia, where he met Stalin, among others, and discovered there what happened to his homeland’s cultural treasures and came to repentance. However, a tragic event prevented him from launching a revolt against communism in his own country.

“The golden head is a distillation of everything that can be admired in Topol. A narrative desperado with an ever-hungry imagination, rarely succumbing to simplifications or clichés of thought, in the case of The Golden Head writing in the perfect rhythm of Hrabal’s The Dancing Hours. An echttopolovian story – history attacking the present, the crudity of totalitarianism, human figures getting punched from all sides, fanfare dreams and fantasies colliding with concrete weaknesses. It’s a story from Mongolia, but a universal one. It’s about history running back and forth across one’s back.”

— Lidové noviny

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