“Gotland” by the Polish journalist and one of the best modern reporters Mariusz Szczygieł (b. 1966) is not only an excellent “guide” to the Czech destinies of the 20th century, but also highly artistic literature. The author writes about the creators and destroyers of the “largest monument to Stalin in the entire globe” in Prague, about the Bati shoe empire, about the Czechoslovak actress who became Goebbels’ mistress, about the niece of Franz Kafka, about the Czech teenager who repeated Jan Palach’s act and set himself on fire in Wenceslas square, as well as about other not so famous, but no less interesting figures. The reports collected in the book break the ingrained image of the Czechs as a peaceful nation of beer lovers. Socialist Czechoslovakia, according to Szczygel, is by no means a mythical country of good-natured seamstresses. This is a country of many years of brutal regime, imbued with fear and a sense of Kafkaesque absurdity.