Ten short stories, ten precise descriptions of ten situations, which take place either right in the magic mid-nineties or look back through the dirty glass of today at the magic eighties. What these stories have in common is the concise, non-pathetic style and the clean-cut sense of the point of the story. Though the themes of the writer are close to our present live, there is something in the texts that keeps reminding the underground literature. Perhaps it is because the most of the heroes are outsiders. Barmaids, drug addicts, the homeless, foreign workers from the Ukraine and other characters are people who try amidst the ever bubbling eruptions of our time to maintain (most of the time without success) an inner independence, to find a space where their need for freedom and positive relations can survive. Hakl’s short stories belong to the best Czech prose of the last few years.