Europeana

Europeana: the history of Europe in the twentieth century, depicted with a detached view, humour, and bitter irony. We present in an original dramatization, this fascinating commentary on the last century where war, invention of bra or perforated toilet paper took the important role.

Banality and key moments get the same space, which creates a new view at our past. Through humour, irony, mystification and exact facts rises a bizarre testimony of the 20th century world. The book by Patrik Ouředník won the public survey of the newspaper Lidove noviny the Most Interesting Book award of the year 2001. It was also nominated for the Magnesia Litera award for fiction and translated into more than two dozen languages.

Vlastimil Hártl wrote about Europeana: "Ouředník’s text lying on the boundary between fiction and essay is a provocative attempt to combine in a strongly heterogeneous form the modern and postmodern elements. In other words, to portray the experience of the world without God in a collage of fictive episodes, documentary elements, historical data, reflections and paraphrases. Or being even more specific, the Ouředník’s text is expressing the modern art’s central theme by postmodern tools – and here we are, the 20th century perfectly depicted."