A postcard showing candles burning down at the grave of Jan Palach. The photo is by Tomki Němec, and on the back it’s stamped “Agentura Radost.” I think a hole was punched in the upper right corner because the postcard was used as an admission ticket to an event.
If this image were included in an extra-illustrated binding of the novel Necessary Errors, it might follow page 385. (For an explanation of extra-illustration, click here.)
A vintage photocopy of a blank form for recording an informer’s pledge with Czechoslovakia’s secret police.
If this image were included in an extra-illustrated binding of the novel Necessary Errors, it might follow page 189. (For an explanation of extra-illustration, click here.)
A postcard from the Prague Spring, dated 25 September 1968 on the verso. “Long live the comrades SVOBODA, DUBČEK, SMRKOVSKÝ, ČERNÍK, KRIEGEL. WE WERE WITH YOU. WE ARE WITH YOU.” The postcard hails from a moment when there was still hope that the Soviet Union might let Czechoslovakia struggle toward “socialism with a human face” under native leadership.
If this image were included in an extra-illustrated binding of the novel Necessary Errors, it might follow page 10. (For an explanation of extra-illustration, click here.)
An admission ticket to T-Club, 1990.
If this image were included in an extra-illustrated binding of the novel Necessary Errors, it might follow page 14. (For an explanation of extra-illustration, click here.)
At the New Yorker’s Page-Turner blog, I’ve written a memoir of my Czech professor, Peter Kussi.
