ABSTRACT
Let me set the scene. Here are two brief passages: the first is from a recent review by John Peter, from The Sunday Times, of a novel by the Czechoslovak writer Milan Kundera:
The place was Prague and the time the mid-fifties.… Now one reason why experimental fiction was a late developer behind the Iron Curtain, and indeed had a lot of trouble being born at all, is not only that it was frowned upon, but also that there was a parched thirst for a specific type of oldfashioned narrative. The land was in the grip of monstrous events. A new order came to power through fraud and intimidation: people were murdered or framed, others simply disappeared; poverty grew, fear reigned. But none of this appeared in newspapers or books: these were stories that were not being told. People wondered if anyone would ever write these stories; if anyone would bear witness.… Life is Elsewhere is by a rebellious citizen who wanted to tell.1
