Lovers for a Day

Book excerpt: This short story collection spanning the celebrated Czech author’s career is a “taxonomic survey of Eros . . . [by] a writer at the top of his form” (The Boston Globe). In these stories that span an acclaimed career from the 1960s to the present, Ivan Klima offers a vivid gallery of people searching for an escape in love: factory girls and assembly-line workers find respite from their daily grind in Walter Mitty-esque fantasies; a young woman finds herself on a honeymoon with a man she did not marry; a divorce-court judge loves the routines of his marriage in ways his mistress can’t understand; and a young wife falls into a passionate affair with an elderly bookbinder crippled by war. Lovers for a Day is a book stamped with Klima’s unique vision. With a personal history of a nation’s evolution, this moving examination of our attempts to find freedom in love will demonstrate why Klima is considered by so many to be “a Czech genius” (Los Angeles Times Book Review).