Petr Placák: Fízl

Translation: Teťjána Okopná (the book has not been published in Ukraine)

Fízl

An extensive essay dedicated to the Communistic regime period is based on the prevalent activity of the time - spying on people. It builds on the contemporary official materials of the State Police, which are set against personal memories, notes and texts that complete the official, and often limited, records, while correcting and/or disproving them. The author suggests that the reasons for the State police to scare and manipulate people were mostly due to the working of the Communist regime rather than to the police. The author highlights the psychological aspects of the life in a dictatorship, where people, as in wartime situations, start watching each other.

Petr Placák (1964)

studied to be a mechanic and was accepted to the Technical University in Prague in 1985; however he was not allowed to study due to political reasons. He played the clarinet in the Plastic People of the Universe band (Hovezí Porážka and Půlnoční Myš). Following Autumn 1989, he worked in the Independence Press Centre, weekly Respect and several newspapers and magazines (Necenzurovane noviny, Český týdeník, Lidové noviny). He has been the chief editor of Babylon, the student political-cultural monthly, since 1995 and the chief editor of publishers of the same name since 2001. He studied history at the Philosophical Faculty of the Charles University in Prague (1992 – 2000), debuting with his novel Medorek (published in 1985 in samizdat and in Lidové noviny publishers in 1990), for which he received the Jiří Orten Award. He received the Magnesia Litera Award in 2008 for his book Fízl.