Three novellas selected from the extensive and diverse work of Karel Sabina (1813 to 1877) bring the author's creative development closer to today's readers and also highlight his significant influence on the shaping of Czech literature in its thematic and genre diversity. The volume opens with the pre-March novella Ervín (1836, revised 1845), a model prose of Czech Romanticism. Vesničané (1847) then represents the first attempts at a realistic depiction of the otherwise predominantly idealized Czech countryside. In the final, artistically perhaps the most successful work Oživené hroby (1870), Sabina soberly, critically, and self-critically confronted the views and ideals of the participants in the European revolutionary events of the 1840s and assessed the results of the efforts and actions of his generation with a brisk punchline. Also included is the magazine version of this novella, titled Hroby živoucích (1863), and a commented list of recorded editions.
