Beyond the World of Men

This collection opens a window into the largely unknown world of Czech women’s writing in the fin de siècle. With stories of women compelled to marry, women driven to suicide, of seduction, solitude, and of the breakup of a lesbian affair, a broad spectrum of women’s lives in that era is represented. The works draw in city and country, high society and more humble backgrounds, as well as including a couple of translations from German, reminding us that Czech literature is the common inheritance of all the writers who lived and worked in Bohemia and Moravia. Linked together by the injustice of patriarchal society, the sheer variety of stories here is a testament to the richness and depth of these women’s struggles, thought and experience.