How I Came to Know Fish (Penguin Translated Texts)
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Product Description
Review
A moving, bittersweet coming of age . . . A collection that works its magic quietly (Kirkus Reviews )
[The series] sheds remarkable light on the literature, culture and politics of the region...anyone coming fresh to the field will be captivated by the richness, variety, humour and pathos of a classic literature that, through a shared historical experience, transcends national and linguistic boundaries. (Cj Schüler Independent on Sunday )
This [series] is a wonderful idea ... They are absurdist parables, by turns hilarious, unsettling and enigmatic. (Nicholas Lezard Guardian )
I urge you to go and read them. (Adam Thirlwell New Statesman )
This new series of Central European Classics is important well beyond simply providing 'good reads'. (Stephen Vizinczey Daily Telegraph )
[The series] sheds remarkable light on the literature, culture and politics of the region...anyone coming fresh to the field will be captivated by the richness, variety, humour and pathos of a classic literature that, through a shared historical experience, transcends national and linguistic boundaries. (Cj Schüler Independent on Sunday )
This [series] is a wonderful idea ... They are absurdist parables, by turns hilarious, unsettling and enigmatic. (Nicholas Lezard Guardian )
I urge you to go and read them. (Adam Thirlwell New Statesman )
This new series of Central European Classics is important well beyond simply providing 'good reads'. (Stephen Vizinczey Daily Telegraph )
Product Description
How I Came to Know Fish (1974) is Ota Pavel's magical memoir of his childhood in Czechoslovakia. Fishing with his father and his Uncle Prosek - the two finest fishermen in the world - he takes a peaceful pleasure from the rivers and ponds of his country. But when the Nazis invade, his father and two older brothers are sent to concentration camps and Pavel must steal their confiscated fish back from under the noses of the SS to feed his family. With tales of his father's battle to provide for his family both in wealthy freedom and in terrifying persecution, this is one boy's passionate and affecting tale of life, love and fishing.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"How I Came To Know Fish" flickers with memory as Ota Pavel remembers his boyhood and youth, spent fishing in and around the countryside just outside of Prague - before and during the second world war- a time when Czechoslovakia was annexed by the Germans. The overlapping stories he tells have a lyrical cadence and rhythm bordering at times on the magical in their powers of description. At the same time darker undercurrents tug at the tales of high jinx and adventure, especially those of his beloved father, who as a Jew, is persecuted by the Germans, and who, for example, has to secretly fish out his beloved carp whilst the Wehrmact sleep. There is a sense of loss, and change, which takes on a greater poignance, after one reads the author's epilogue, where in he tells us how the book came into being in the first place. "How I Came to Know Fish" is a gentle, understated book, that made me laugh and feel sad almost at the same time, life affirming in the author's love of his father, fishing and of nature and left me wishing I could read more - a slender book with deeper currents.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Fishing against a backdrop of war.
21 Dec 1998
Format:Paperback
This gentle, unassuming book is one of the most powerful I have ever read. It is the story of a young boy's experiences with life as his days change from idyllic afternoons of fishing to the realities of WWII. Much more than a book about fishing, though it contains many wonderful espisodes about fish and fishing, it is a recounting of the hardships, terrors, and ultimate kindnesses that populate war. As you will learn, fish and fishing became the metaphor for freedom for Ota Pavel.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
more than a fishing book
13 May 1999
Format:Paperback
I fell quickly and completely in love with this book. Unpretentious, disarmingly honest, simple without being simplistic. It's also sneaky -- it purports to be a memoir of a simple, arcadian time and place, then blindsides you with the realization that this was not such a simple time after all. I wish I could give it six stars.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
WONDERFUL AND MOVING
17 Dec 1998
Format:Hardcover
VERY MOVING AND BEAUTIFUL. THE WORLD BEFORE THE WWII FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A LITTLE BOY, SWEET AND TENDER. THE GREAT STARTING POINT TO EXPLORE THE CZECH LITERATURE. IN THE SAME CLASS AS WRITINGS OF BULHAKOV AND HUELLE, VERY MAGICAL AND MYSTERIOUS.
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