A raw, yet tender narrative about the 1990s, squats, street fights against racism and hope from the perspective of a left-wing subculture.

Prose

In this documentary novel, Radek Wollmann returns to the late 1990s, a period that many people today attach vague labels to or reduce to the mere political transformation of the country. Such simplifications are quickly given short shrift in this book. We are given a view of the streets where gangs of neo-Nazi skinheads roam and violence is their way of maintaining a semblance of order in a world slipping away from them. Attacks, harassment and murders form the backdrop to the everyday life into which leftwing subculture steps—not as romanticized outsiders, but as a group learning to respond by using similar methods. Wollmann portrays demonstrations, concerts, and squats not as heroic chapters of subcultural mythology, but as a brutal struggle to secure a place to live and forge an identity in a period offering few stable points of reference. The book links the violence and ideals of that era with contemporary issues: anti-Romany bigotry, the search for authenticity and questions of integrity. In place of nostalgia, memories of the postrevolutionary fervour are laid bare.

Radek Wollmann’s (1978) life story consists of the open meeting places he has helped create over the years. Their formats may change—squats, bars, training cafes, cultural centres—but their purpose remains the same; to create a slightly better and more open world here and now.