"My name is not; I'm nobody. I'm worse than nobody, I'm a rat. ”
The Literature in the Ear series brings you world and Czech classics in an abridged form, without missing the essentials and with quotations. Listen to the most famous novels of our age.
The Pied Piper is the most famous work of the Czech poet, novelist, playwright and politician Viktor Dyke, who was even imprisoned for treason as a Czech resistance fighter during the First World War. It is based on an old German legend about lost children, which dates back to the 13th century.
The titular hero of the story is the Pied Piper, a romantic figure of a mysterious man with no name and a special talent for driving rats out of cities with his flute playing. The plot of the book begins when the Pied Piper arrives in the German town of Hammeln. Apart from the betrayal that some of the townspeople are about to inflict on him, he is about to experience one more unexpected thing - he falls passionately in love with the beautiful young Agnes. But she already has one fiancé.
The rats in the story represent something nasty - they carry infection and disease. The Pied Piper himself is perceived as useful by the people, but no one except Agnes wants to cultivate any closer relations with him. But the disease also works here on a metaphorical level. Through the eyes of the Pied Piper, all the people in the town are sick, and their sicknesses are bad human qualities and bad character. The Pied Piper is faced with the choice of leaving the city quietly and peacefully or seeking revenge.
They act:
Petr Buchta - NarratorPetr Gelnar - The Pied PiperBarbora Mosnova - AgnesMagdaléna Zimová - MotherRadka Pavlovčinová - KätchenViktor Dvořák - Sepp Jörgen