CESKOSLOVENSKO MUJ OSUD (TRANS: CZECHOSLOVAKIA MY FATE) . 1982. THE 4 VOLUME “BIBLE OF SAMIZDAT” IN ORIGINAL SLIPCASE  

Prague: n.p., 1982. 
4 vols, uniformly 25.5 x 19cm, Vol 1: 276pp, vol 2: 612pp, vol 3: 725pp and vol 4: 605pp. Carbon copy pages – all recto. Original cloth boards with labels with typed titles pasted on. Original card slipcase which is cloth covered.

Volume 1 has an original b/w silver gelatin photograph tipped onto the first endpaper showing Dritina as a young boy. Drtina was the Secretary to the former President of Czechoslovakia Edvard Benes and, like, Benes was exiled to London during the second world war during which he was the public voice of opposition to the Nazis thanks to regular BBC broadcasts to his homeland. After the war Dritina was violently anti-communist (although interestingly Benes was a friend of Stalin’s) and did not return home.

These four volumes published here are his collected memoirs and thoughts – many of which were anathema to the Communist state hence Drtina’s book was illegal during “normalisation” and the sheer size of the four volumes might well have made it hard to smuggle and hide. This collection is complete in all four volumes and all are in fine estate (with on small flaw in that on page at the very end of the last volume where there is a small paper lack on the penultimate page) are in like slipcase. Rare and quite massive. 

Price is for all 4 volumes in slipcase