Josef Skvorecky’s Novella “Neuilly” — “Dichtung” or “Wahreit”?

Abstract

The study deals with a novella Neuilly, an almost unknown piece of work written by the renowned Czech writer Josef Skvorecky in 1974. In Neuilly, Skvorecky abandoned the usual ways of construction of his works including an elementary plot and story and offered to the reader an introspective view of his mind affected by a personal existential crisis caused by exile and loss of his homeland. The study follows up the most traumatic points in Skvorecky’s life depicted by the text; one of them, the negative reaction of the Czech dissent on Skvorecky’s novel The Miracle Game (1972), becomes an opportunity to show the discrepancies between the collective memory shared by the creators and supporters of political reforms in the era of Alexander Dubcek and the individual memory of a sceptical writer who — as a consequence of the very same events — lost his home.