IN WORKING KNOWLEDGE, over the course of one hundred brief and evanescent texts, Kràl brings together, as his compatriot Milan Kundera writes in his introduction, “this strange and beautiful existential encyclopaedia of the everyday”.
Whether describing twilight, a toothpick, the ritual of shaving or the act of going upstairs, his gaze is ingenuous, humble, amazed. Mute objects, fleeting gestures, changeless passions: Kràl forces us to look at them anew. Each limpid, graceful essay is a brief voyage of discovery in which lowly objects and everyday actions, so often unobserved, are transfigured. Petr Kràl has the unerring ability to perceive, to catch the commonplace by surprise and with the unsettling clarity see beyond the everyday to the fabric of life beneath.
Translated from the French by prize winning translator Frank Wynne.

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PETR KRAL, born in Czechoslovakia in 1941, was a member of the Czech surrealist movement spearheaded by Vratislav Effenberger and poet Vitezslav Nezval. He moved to Paris in 1968, where in the forty years since he has gained a considerable reputation as a prolific poet, essayist and film critic. He has also written a remarkable  two-volume work on the burlesque comedies of the silent era. Petr Kràl lives and works in Paris.

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PUBLICATION SEPTEMBER 2008
ISBN  978 1 901285 73 4
Cover Illustration film still from 'Coffee & Cigarettes' 
(courtesy of Jim Jarmusch)
Introduction by Milan Kundera

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“This strange and beautiful existential encyclopaedia of the everyday is a lesson in modesty inflicted upon our sense of self”  
Milan Kundera

"An absorbing collection of short prose texts (...) probing the fabulous details of everyday life (...) Kràl's succinct texts are persuasive; they haunt the mind, thereafter influencing our perceptions"
France Magazine