STORIES FOR COFFEE VI.

In previous years, Hana Hrabáková successfully published five instalments of her “Stories for Coffee” series, and this year she returns with another part of this collection. The author engages her readers with a comprehensive set of humorous texts literally taken “from life”. The subtitle of the current book of stories, “How to Survive a Disaster”, takes the reader back to the retro environment of student days in the eighties, first romantic sparks, and first experiences behind the wheel. And it must be added that the memories of these human “disasters” are once again bursting with humour, exaggeration, and irony. Hana Hrabáková knows what she is writing about – after all, she has simply put a literary spin on what her readers also experienced and what they still recall today with a certain amount of indulgent nostalgia.

HANA HRABÁKOVÁ was born on 23 January 1962 in Beroun, to a veterinarian father and an accountant mother. She initially worked as a nursery school teacher, then spent five years teaching at the Special and Auxiliary School in Králův Dvůr, before working as a social worker for the Czech Red Cross, where she contributed to the establishment of the Berounka Shelter. For several years, she was the deputy director of Klubíčko, and she co-founded and managed a day care centre for clients with disabilities. For twenty years, she organised seaside health retreats for children from the Beroun basin. She returned to education, served for many years as the headmistress of Beroun-Závodí Nursery School, and now works at a secondary vocational school. Hana Hrabáková first published her short prose in magazines and made her literary debut in 2015 with the title Stories for Coffee / How to Survive Thirty Years with One Man (and One Mother-in-Law), which was met with unprecedented reader acclaim and paved the way for the continuation of this short story series. A year later, this was followed by Stories for Coffee II / How to Survive Marriage and Keep Your Female Sanity, and the very next year, the book Stories for Coffee III / How We Could Survive Without a Mobile Phone, and in the following years Stories for Coffee IV / How to Survive Childhood and Stories for Coffee V / How to Survive First Loves, which once again built on the previous readership success. Now, the author is expanding her story series with further tales.

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Excerpt:

... and Jíva continues his story: “I have to tell you this before I forget. Another student messed up a test during a lesson and only got twenty-two out of a possible fifty. The instructor tells him: ‘You couldn't have possibly written it this badly! So few points? If you'd just ticked 'A' for everything, you'd have to have got more!’ The lad took it to heart and in the next lesson, he thought about it and got 33 points. The instructor wanted to encourage him and praised him: ‘You see, it’s still not enough, but if you keep trying, it’ll get better.’ And the boy confidently replied: ‘I didn’t try. I just ticked ‘A’ for everything!’”