Although Klima spent many years as a silenced writer in his native Prague, the theme of messed-up relationships has tended to preoccupy him more than that of politics. His work is dominated by the awkward, evasive exchanges that pass for conversation between men and women. This is a slight collection of 12 stories spanning some 30 years of his career. The early pieces are weak, and are not helped by some very stiff dialogue, but the later stories are strong. Readers of his early novel, Love and Garbage, will know that Klima is adept at describing emotional chaos, particularly the kind caused by domestic triangles. There are many variations on the theme in this book.
"Long-Distance Conversations" features a married New Zealander who persists in phoning a woman, also married, in Prague. He is intent on being with her, although, as she points out, they are both married to other people. The more frantic he sounds, the calmer and more practical she is, even to the point of remarking that an airline ticket from New Zealand to Prague would cost less than his phone bills. It is all very funny, and succeeds less as a tale of frustrated love than a highly ironic example of the fact that romance is often at the mercy of good - or bad - timing.
Elsewhere, a jealous husband quizzes his wife about her whereabouts, saying she has been seen in conversation with an unnamed man, whom she claims is a college friend. The husband is not convinced, and she counters his doubts with typical Klimaesque exasperation: "Why shouldn't he be there? Do you think my college pals are banned from the bottom of Wenceslas Square on Monday or something?"
Another husband, no longer capable of remembering if he ever loved his wife, embarks on a passionate affair only to falter at the exact moment his life could have changed, and so loses his lover. It is the sharpness of his self-realisation that makes this failure all the more poignant. Interestingly, the best story is an utterly uncharacteristic narrative about an unhappy rich man's final days. Never one of literature's great stylists, Ivan Klima - whose reputation is assured by the magnificent Judge On Trial - engages the reader through his unsentimental realism, humanity and calm understanding of the mistakes which shape lives.
Eileen Battersby is a critic and Irish Times journalist