Argo Publishing: Peter Placák's Fízl in a new edition

The new edition of the book, which was awarded the Magnesia Litera in 2008, will be christened by Jáchym Topol, who is featured in the book, participated in the events described and commented on in the book, and will ask the author about them.

The band Chleba se salámem will play.

Free admission.

"By joining the secret political police of a tyrannical regime, by choosing a false name, by giving up his identity in order to lead others astray, he has voluntarily renounced his humanity and sealed his fate. The cop has no name, no father, no mother. He is an outlaw who has, of his own free will, separated himself from human society..." writes Petr Placák in his essay on the border between historiography and fiction, in which he accounts for the era of normalisation and its secret political police. Although Placák's account of the "führer" (fízl) is based on the realities of the time, including the StB materials annotated by the author about things he himself experienced, it can also be understood as a timeless message about the relationship between the individual and the system and about systemic surveillance, which is becoming more relevant in the electronic age. The second, expanded edition now includes a happy ending - the author's triumphant post-Soviet trial of the secret police officers featured in The Führer. "Thanks to these Aesthesians, I wrote the book, received the Magnesia Litera prize for it, a fee of one hundred thousand, and I also put the main characters of the book behind bars. That's called 100% exploitation of the material..." Placák said at the end of the trial.