Miroslav Holub was hailed as a major figure in East European literature and praised for a sensibility, permeated by scientific thought, that bridged dangerous gaps and specious divisions in human knowledge. This collection's ten-page title poem, Holub's longest, is among the major long poems of the second half-century. The theater pieces and the puppet sequence, filtering social and psychological issues through the lens of playhouse and fairytale, are brilliant literary experiments. This volume, appearing here for the first time in any language, marked a milestone in the development of one of the great European masters.
Miroslav Holub (1923-98) was one of Czechoslovakia's most original and prolific poets, and also a world-famous immunologist with more than 150 published scientific papers to his credit.
