Unsound Siblings

A new translation of Egon Bondy's classic critique and parody of Communist Czechoslovakia. Bondy's merry utopia, or rather anti-utopia, was written during the bleakest years of "normalization" in Communist Czechoslovakia during the 1970s. Once considered a cult novel of the Czech underground, Unsound Siblings is not only a celebration of the "alternative way of life" of people living deliberately outside of (Communist) state power and a mockery of the contemporary consumerist ideas of the police state, but also a light parody of science fiction, organically incorporating philosophical themes. As much as this work can also be described as "adventure literature," evoking, for example, the scenery of a "mysterious island," its overall message reaches the power of a religious, gospel message that it is, despite all odds, possible to live in this world after all. Unsound Siblings , first published in Czech by the exiled 68 Publishers in Toronto and circulated in samizdat copies in Czechoslovakia, later won the Egon Hostovský Prize.