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Why Kundera Never Went Home

Petr Drulak | Compact | 1st August 2023

He may have been the greatest Czech novelist since Kafka, but Milan Kundera was never much loved at home. Czechs saw him as the anti-Havel: When Havel was a persecuted dissident, Kundera was an establishment gadfly; while Havel stayed and suffered, Kundera emigrated and prospered. It only made things worse that Kundera, by far Havel's moral inferior, was by far the better writer (3,270 words)

From The Browser Eleven Years Ago

Snap Goes The Crocodile

Marina Akhmedova | OD Russia | 4th August 2012

Harrowing throughout. Notes on life among the drug addicts of Yekaterinburg. Much granular detail about preparing and injecting home-made narcotics. "It is dark and fetid in here, as if you are in the depths of a forest. Pale, dropsical men lie on a couch redolent of urine. They look like mushrooms which have sprouted in some poisonous grove. A swollen girl occupies the only chair" (9,070 words)