Unsound Siblings

A new translation of Egon Bondy's classic critique and parody of Communist Czechoslovakia.

Bondy's merry utopia, or rather anti-utopia, was written during the bleakest years of "normalization" in Communist Czechoslovakia during the 1970s. Once considered a cult novel of the Czech underground, Unsound Siblings is not only a celebration of the "alternative way of life" of people living deliberately outside of (Communist) state power and a mockery of the contemporary consumerist ideas of the police state, but also a light parody of science fiction, organically incorporating philosophical themes. As much as this work can also be described as "adventure literature," evoking, for example, the scenery of a "mysterious island," its overall message reaches the power of a religious, gospel message that it is, despite all odds, possible to live in this world after all. Unsound Siblings, first published in Czech by the exiled 68 Publishers in Toronto and circulated in samizdat copies in Czechoslovakia, later won the Egon Hostovský Prize.

Egon Bondy (1930-2007) was a non-conformist writer and philosopher, influential especially in the Prague underground of the 1970s and 1980s. Mark Corner is a translator, author, and lecturer in religious and European studies who lives and works in Brussels. Jiří Grus is an acclaimed Czech painter, comics illustrator, and screenwriter.