'Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age' encapsulates the world vision of Czechoslavakia's best-loved author in one all-embracing, tumbling, breath-taking sentence. Saints and sinners, emperors and embezzlers, barmaids and balalaikas all play their part in the bawdy reminiscences of Hrabal's cobbler as he charms an audience of young beauties. One tipsy recollection triggers another, amorous conquests vie with bloody adventure, and acquire in the haphazard telling the same gravitas as earth-shattering events.
Although shameless and frivolous, the shocking clarity of the cobbler's tale was not lost on the communist authorities who, in 1968, banned this classic of modern satire.
