Who has the last laugh

An eye for an eye and the whole world will be blind

The bicycle race in the south of Bohemia could have been just a sporting rivalry. For the two young men, Václav and Gerhard, it is nothing but victory. But it is September 1938, Vasek is a Czech communist and Gery is a Sudeten German. That's not the basis for a good ending. The Germans are trying to build the Third Reich, the Czechs are trying to build the resistance, the communists are trying to build the perfect society. But at the end everyone is exhausted and no one is laughing. In the final post-war scene in the prison, it is hard to tell whether the German prisoner or his Czech guard is sadder. An eye for an eye and the whole world will be blind. The strong point of the story is the captivating and vivid descriptions of South Bohemian realities, which the author, as a South Bohemian patriot, knows well.