A collection of Jáchym Topol's texts from 1980-1984, based on poems from three samizdat collections, never published in print, Eskimo Dog (1982), The Moving Face (1983) and Notes for an Autumn Creature (1984), shows the poet and prose writer in the very beginnings of his work, but with an already defined authorial poetics. The selected poems and one of their prose counterparts, the short story Venezuela from the same period, are characterized by an immediate urgency of intonation, a suggestive depiction of a pervasive oppressive atmosphere, illuminated only by intense poetic images, a varied register of characteristic motifs (among which the ritualized struggles with the cruelty of the world and with one's own demons take a prominent place), and a distinctly sarcastic detachment. The texts of The Terrifying Spree thus contain at their core features essential to the future shape of Topol's literary output.
Czech edition