Szczygiel - Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia

An intelligent, captivating, and much-needed book.
ADAM MICHNIK

A great book. Mariusz Szczygie is well versed in the Polish school of reportage writing and he applies his method to this specific Czech ambiguity. Original and surprising.
AGNIESZKA HOLLAND

Extraordinary, hypnotizing, and disturbing tales.
LIBRATION

If you want to understand the Czech Republic in the twentieth century, read Gottland.
FRANKFURTER ALLEGEMEINE ZEITUNG

Masterful prose impressive.
NEUE ZRCHER ZEITUNG

One of the most valuable and eloquent testimonies about the Czech people.
PRVO ( CZECH REPUBLIC )

GOTTLAND: MOSTLY TRUE STORIES FROM HALF OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA

First published in Poland as Gottland
Copyright 2006, 2014 by Mariusz Szczygie
Translation copyright 2014 by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

First Melville House printing: May 2014

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Szczygiel, Mariusz, 1966
[Gottland. English]
Gottland : mostly true stories from half of Czechoslovakia / Mariusz
Szczygiel; translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
pages cm
Originally published in Polish in 2006.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-61219-313-7 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-61219-314-4 (ebook)
1. Czech RepublicAnecdotes. 2. Czech RepublicSocial conditionsAnecdotes. I. Lloyd-Jones, Antonia, translator. II. Title.
DB2011.S9313 2014
943.71dc23
2014012465

Design by Christopher King

v3.1

For Egon Erwin Kisch

Why does it smell so bad in here? six-year-old Tom Bata asks his father, Antonn. This is the first manifestation of his desire to set reality straight.

We do not know what his father says in reply. He is probably quite reticent on the whole.

Cobbler Antonn Bata is married for the second time. Twice he has taken a widow with children as his wife. With each wife he has also had his own children. Altogether, at his small cobblers workshop in Zln he is raising twelve children from four marriages. Apart from that, he works with seven other people. His second wife does not like drafts.

The three children from his first marriage, Anna, Antonn and eighteen-year-old Tom, are standing in front of their fifty-year-old father. They are demanding their mothers inheritance. Theyre also suggesting that he should immediately give them whatever they are going to inherit after his death. They dont have the time to wait all those years, and anyway it is crowded at home.

They get eight hundred gulden in silver coins, and they hire four workers.

They have debts of eight thousand zlotys. They cant afford new leather hides and they have no money to pay for the old ones. Antonn is called up for the army, and Anna goes to work in Vienna as a domestic servant.

Tom stares at the remaining leather, and in his despair he hits upon the most important principle of his life: always turn failure into advantage.

As they cannot afford leather, they will have to make shoes out of what is available: canvas. Canvas doesnt cost much, and the rest of the leather can be used to make soles. This is how Bata devises one of the great successes of the new century: canvas shoes with leather soles. He brings in several thousand orders from Vienna, all gathered in a single day. People start to call the shoes batovky.

This allows him to build his first small factory, where fifty men work in a space of two thousand square feet.

The workers notice that he can never be calm. He is always so stimulated that other people feel exhausted in his company.

He reads a newspaper article about some machines being made in America. He sets off for the States, and in Lynn, Massachusetts, a shoe-making city, he hires himself out as a worker at a large factory. He takes three of his employees with him, and each one finds employment at a different place. He gives them orders to monitor each stage of production closely. Every Saturday the four shoemakers from Zln meet up at a saloon, where they exchange observations.

They are amazed that, in America, even small children do their best to earn their own keep. What makes the biggest impression on Bata is a six-year-old boy who goes from house to house, catching flies in exchange for payment.

Some people are dying of poverty, but others bake fritters in the street and sell them for one cent. Tom notices a curious feature of the Americans: they can adapt en masse to any kind of novelty humanity has managed to invent.