Never before in English, the stories in Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult were written mostly in the 1950's and present the Czech master Bohumil Hrabal at the height of his powers. The stories capture a time when Czech Stalinists were turning society upside down, inflicting their social and political experiments on mostly unwilling subjects. Set variously--in the gas-lit streets of post-war Prague; on the raucous and dangerous factory floor of the famous Poldi steelworks where Hrabal himself once worked; in a cacophonous open-air dance hall where classical and popular music literally come to blows; at the basement studio where a crazed artist attempts to fashion a national icon; on the scaffolding around a decommissioned church--these stories capture men and women trapped in an eerily beautiful nightmare, longing for a world where, as Hrabal says, "humor and metaphysical escape can reign supreme.".