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A three-day wake in Manila mourning the aged playboy Don Severino Gil is the setting for social satire and personal awakening. Unusually, his coffin is closed. Why?Among the powerful Gil family of doctors, lawyers, socialites, priests, businessmen as well as the rare student dissident speculation grows rife, but soon moves on to the topic of the Pope's planned visit to the Philippines. Religion, death, and the harsh realities of martial law crowd around them.Among the mourners are two isolated people struggling to find themselves: Don Severino's favourite niece Telly, a 49-year-old divorcée with a penchant for poetry and a tendency to suicide, and Sevi, the dead man's son, a middle-aged priest who works in the slums but doubts his vocation.If the coffin is opened, who will have the courage to look inside?

These witty and ironical short essays in the classic Czech genre known as feuilletons, or chronicles, show Ludvik Vaculik's philosophy, honesty and humor. His work, in George Theiner's stylish translation, will evoke a powerful response today from English-language readers wondering how to think clearly and keep their values in confusing times.Author of the radical 2000 Words manifesto for writers during the Prague Spring of 1968, Ludvik Vaculik was banned from all official publishing after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia during two decades until the fall of communism with the Velvet Revolution of 1989. However, as founding editor of the "Padlock Editions" of informally circulated typescripts, he was central to maintaining independent writing and ideas in the Czech language.After the Velvet Revolution confirmed his importance as an independent thinker and cultural figure, Vaculik continued his refusal to subscribe to accepted conventions. 'Democracy has made me a poor democrat' he wrote of the new Czech age of consumer culture, media sound bites and public relations.

In the face of Europe's rising nationalism and intolerance, this timely anthology by Czech writers addresses a key issue for today. The courage of Czech writers is legendary. During the Cold War they kept their nation's conscience alive by clandestine publishing while imprisoned as "dissidents" or collecting garbage, washing windows or selling fish as "non-persons," and then they took the lead in the Velvet Revolution of 1989 that overthrew communism.In Europe and the West today - with its rising nationalism and political extremism - subtlety, humour and sharp intelligence are needed more than ever, and this volume of stories, poetry, essays and drama showcases some of the best Czech writing on these important topics. The volume also lends insight into the role of Czech writers during two of the darkest periods of Central European history: the struggles against fascism and communism.