Ever Green Is...

Hailed as one of the most important Eastern European writers of the post-communist era, Pavel Vilikovsky began his career in 1964. But the implicit political content of his writing and its straightforward treatment of such taboo topics as bisexuality kept him from publishing the works collected in Ever Green is..., until just before the Velvet Revolution. The novella of the volume's title is the story of a life spent in Central Europe from the imperial period through communism. The narrator begins by attempting to tell of his seduction by the Austro-Hungarian head of intelligence but then spins off into a hilarious mosaic of exaggerations, experiences, and philosophical musings and holds forth on such topics as winning a gunfight atop the Matterhorn and whether Bucharest really is ""The London of the south."" Vilikovsky employs the postmodernist's palette, using manic energy and a string of literary and cultural illusions, to tell a story far more panoramic than the one in the mind - and on the tongue - of his main character. This collection also includes the short story Everything I Know about Central-Europeanism (with a little friendly help from Olomouc and Camus), wherein the narrator meets the gloomy French existentialist while en route to serve on the jury of the Miss People's Democracy Pageant; and the acclaimed short novel A Horse Upstairs, a Blind Man in Vrable.