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Miss Silvers Past
Karel Leden works in the State publishing house in Prague, where you publish what the Party likes, or risk life and liberty. Then the beautiful, mysterious Lenka Silver arrives. Passions rise--and suddenly there is a murder. There are plenty of suspects, but all that is certain is that the affair is in some way connected to Miss Silver's past...
251 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
43 people are currently reading
209 people want to read
About the author
Josef Škvorecký
144 books154 followersJosef Škvorecký, CM was a Czech writer and publisher who spent much of his life in Canada. Škvorecký was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1980. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country. By turns humorous, wise, eloquent and humanistic, Škvorecký's fiction deals with several themes: the horrors of totalitarianism and repression, the expatriate experience, and the miracle of jazz.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
February 10, 2026
This is the first book that I read by Joseph Skvorecky. I loved it and have since read everything available in English translation by Skvorecky
Miss Silver's Past is the book where Skvorecky (or possibly his translator) most successfully manages to make Skvorecky's tone ressemble that of Evelyn Waugh whom Skvorecky greatly admired. As in a good Waugh novel, the book is filled with witty dialogues involving alluring women and the men who are hot in their pursuit. Moreover in good Waugh style it is succinct, snappy and appropriately short.
Our hero narrator begins with a delightful description of the stunningly beautiful and incredibly smart Miss Silver in a bikini when the two first meet on a beach. The scene quickly changes to the publishing house where our hero is employed. The goal of the enterprise is to encourage artistry without incurring wrath and retribution from the Communist regime. God must be spelled with a small "g" to indicate its anthropological meaning and never with a capital "G" which would indicate that the author, editor and publisher believe in a supreme deity.
Our hero combines his noble efforts to encourage freedom in literature with his less noble attempts to seduce every woman in the office and every female author that the firm publishes. In this regard, he appears to be more successful in the second endeavour.
For her part, the clever Miss Silver succeeds in all her various schemes. She keeps our Lothario narrator at a distance choosing instead to marry a nice guy.
Miss Silver's Past is the book where Skvorecky (or possibly his translator) most successfully manages to make Skvorecky's tone ressemble that of Evelyn Waugh whom Skvorecky greatly admired. As in a good Waugh novel, the book is filled with witty dialogues involving alluring women and the men who are hot in their pursuit. Moreover in good Waugh style it is succinct, snappy and appropriately short.
Our hero narrator begins with a delightful description of the stunningly beautiful and incredibly smart Miss Silver in a bikini when the two first meet on a beach. The scene quickly changes to the publishing house where our hero is employed. The goal of the enterprise is to encourage artistry without incurring wrath and retribution from the Communist regime. God must be spelled with a small "g" to indicate its anthropological meaning and never with a capital "G" which would indicate that the author, editor and publisher believe in a supreme deity.
Our hero combines his noble efforts to encourage freedom in literature with his less noble attempts to seduce every woman in the office and every female author that the firm publishes. In this regard, he appears to be more successful in the second endeavour.
For her part, the clever Miss Silver succeeds in all her various schemes. She keeps our Lothario narrator at a distance choosing instead to marry a nice guy.
March 26, 2018
Senryu Review:
Lovesick poet chases
Nordic stunner across town
in droll mystery.
Lovesick poet chases
Nordic stunner across town
in droll mystery.
February 11, 2017
My dad has been trying to get me to read more Czech authors for ages, but I could never get into any of the novels he recommended to me. So when he put this in my hands I was skeptical, thinking that I wouldn't get past the first chapter. But I wanted to give it a go, because I knew my dad loves this author.
And I have to say that I was very surprised by this book. It was easy to read, and I found the plot interesting enough to keep my reading, though it wasn't quite gripping. I was, for the majority of the book, worried, thinking that Lenka Silver was just another female character who I have read many times in literature - that sort of dangerous, mysterious, quirky woman, the sort of female that John Green seems to adore as love interests for his protagonist. I find these types of female characters annoying, I think their coined by Tumblr "manic pixie fairies" or something alone those lines. But Josef pulls it back, which is why I rated this book 4 stars.
And I have to say that I was very surprised by this book. It was easy to read, and I found the plot interesting enough to keep my reading, though it wasn't quite gripping. I was, for the majority of the book, worried, thinking that Lenka Silver was just another female character who I have read many times in literature - that sort of dangerous, mysterious, quirky woman, the sort of female that John Green seems to adore as love interests for his protagonist. I find these types of female characters annoying, I think their coined by Tumblr "manic pixie fairies" or something alone those lines. But Josef pulls it back, which is why I rated this book 4 stars.
March 7, 2021
Przeczytałam tę książkę tylko dlatego, że muszę o niej napisać 5-stronnicową pracę... Jak mam napisać 5 stron, jeśli mogę zamknąć to w 5 słowach?
Szczerze mówiąc to ta powieść bardziej mnie szokowała, niż bawiła i dostarczała rozrywki. Stosunek głównego bohatera do literatury, społeczeństwa a przede wszystkim do kobiet jest po prostu ciężki do przełknięcia, a jego moralność, czy też jej brak, to zwykłe banialuki i czasami miałam lekkie mdłości, kiedy czytałam o jego pomysłach i zachowaniu, kiedy sam dopuszczał się czynów w dzisiejszym pojmowaniu świata haniebnych. Jednak praca na szczycie, brylowanie w towarzystwie... No czasami śmiałam się z zażenowania, bo niewiele mogłam zrobić.
Poniekąd podoba mi się przedstawienie wątki wydawniczego, zwłaszcza w komunistycznej Czechosłowacji, z tymi wszystkimi towarzyszami i nadzorem, cenzurą. Można też doszukać się w książce wątków ateistycznych i przedstawienia tego w ogólnym społeczeństwie, jak czasem działo to jak płachta na byka. Czasem z dawnych powieści można nauczyć się więcej o historii niż z podręczników.
Z czeskich pisarzy na pewno nie zrezygnuję, ze względu na studia, ale nie wiem, czy ze Škvoreckim jeszcze będę się spotykała. Raczej ominę go o krok lub dwa
Szczerze mówiąc to ta powieść bardziej mnie szokowała, niż bawiła i dostarczała rozrywki. Stosunek głównego bohatera do literatury, społeczeństwa a przede wszystkim do kobiet jest po prostu ciężki do przełknięcia, a jego moralność, czy też jej brak, to zwykłe banialuki i czasami miałam lekkie mdłości, kiedy czytałam o jego pomysłach i zachowaniu, kiedy sam dopuszczał się czynów w dzisiejszym pojmowaniu świata haniebnych. Jednak praca na szczycie, brylowanie w towarzystwie... No czasami śmiałam się z zażenowania, bo niewiele mogłam zrobić.
Poniekąd podoba mi się przedstawienie wątki wydawniczego, zwłaszcza w komunistycznej Czechosłowacji, z tymi wszystkimi towarzyszami i nadzorem, cenzurą. Można też doszukać się w książce wątków ateistycznych i przedstawienia tego w ogólnym społeczeństwie, jak czasem działo to jak płachta na byka. Czasem z dawnych powieści można nauczyć się więcej o historii niż z podręczników.
Z czeskich pisarzy na pewno nie zrezygnuję, ze względu na studia, ale nie wiem, czy ze Škvoreckim jeszcze będę się spotykała. Raczej ominę go o krok lub dwa
Read
April 24, 2011It was interesting to reread this. I hadn't remembered the narrator being such a consistent jerk from beginning to end, although I'd pretty much remembered the contents of Miss Silver's mysterious past. I'm trying to think just when I would have read it the first time--mid to late 1980s, presumably. Apparently my tolerance for unpleasant men was higher then, or at least the fictional kind.
This prompts me to speculate on reactions to disagreeable narrators. To some extent, I think we want to like or at least accept narrators, as we're seeing the world through their eyes. We're often willing to be more sympathetic than we would be to a real person. But not always. I think that in the past I was willing to accept this narrator's professed intense love for Lenka Silver, whereas now I largely took Lenka Silver's dispassionate and sometimes disgusted view of him.
The enjoyable aspect of the book was mainly the depiction of the internal workings and machinations of a Czech publishing house during the 1960s. This was fairly appalling, but at least funny. And of course now I knew more of the references, so I knew who Orten was, and I was irked that half the references to Nusle were spelled Nulse, and so on. And connected the reference to a surrealist writer to Nezval, although he was already dead. Still, I'm not sure the book is as good as it could be.
This prompts me to speculate on reactions to disagreeable narrators. To some extent, I think we want to like or at least accept narrators, as we're seeing the world through their eyes. We're often willing to be more sympathetic than we would be to a real person. But not always. I think that in the past I was willing to accept this narrator's professed intense love for Lenka Silver, whereas now I largely took Lenka Silver's dispassionate and sometimes disgusted view of him.
The enjoyable aspect of the book was mainly the depiction of the internal workings and machinations of a Czech publishing house during the 1960s. This was fairly appalling, but at least funny. And of course now I knew more of the references, so I knew who Orten was, and I was irked that half the references to Nusle were spelled Nulse, and so on. And connected the reference to a surrealist writer to Nezval, although he was already dead. Still, I'm not sure the book is as good as it could be.
November 20, 2021
5/5. 32-letnik Karel Leden je urednik v prorežimski češkoslovaški založbi, nekoč je klepal stihe, sedaj pa z uredniškimi prijemi v prostem času peca dekleta po praški kulturni sceni. Ko lovi skrivnostno Lenko Srebrno, svoj trnek nanjo vrže še njegov šef urednik, pravo šovinistično prase, ki vsak ženski rokopis, neustrezen s smernicami socrealizma pošlje "gor v upravo", avtorico pa "dol v obdelavo". Škvorecky, ki je marsikaj napisal "za predal", hudomušno opisuje zlizanost literarne elite z oblastjo, da pa ne ostane le pri satiri, ji zvito primeša še kriminalno zgodbo. Mlada levinja je nastajala med leti 1963 in 1967, kmalu po izidu (1969) pa je avtor že emigriral v Kanado. V slovenščino je bila prevedena iz nemščine, saj je Škvorecky v ČSSR že veljal za socializem nevarnega (beri prepovedanega) pisca.
May 30, 2016
Leželi jsme na uválené trávě po obou stranách dívčiny
osušky. Dívka ležela na zádech, a co si myslela, bylo skryto
clonou neprůhledných brýlí, které tmavě zrcadlily svět.
Celým povrchem těla přijímala slunce jako nějakou svátost
a moje myšlenky pobíhaly sem tam po drobných nožičkách
nervů. Tohle jsem už dlouho nepoznal, tohle mravenčení.
Pocit něčeho úplně nového pod sluncem, co má štíhlé,
nekonečně dlouhé nohy a falešné a příliš moudré oči, které
jsem dosud nespatřil. Ten intenzivní pocit života.
osušky. Dívka ležela na zádech, a co si myslela, bylo skryto
clonou neprůhledných brýlí, které tmavě zrcadlily svět.
Celým povrchem těla přijímala slunce jako nějakou svátost
a moje myšlenky pobíhaly sem tam po drobných nožičkách
nervů. Tohle jsem už dlouho nepoznal, tohle mravenčení.
Pocit něčeho úplně nového pod sluncem, co má štíhlé,
nekonečně dlouhé nohy a falešné a příliš moudré oči, které
jsem dosud nespatřil. Ten intenzivní pocit života.
December 31, 2009
Callow youth meets intriguing woman and follows her around, slobbering, all over Prague. Plays out against a background of Party machinations. Fascinating.
July 31, 2020
This was the book of his I liked the least as I found it a little riduiculous, despite the surprise ending, and a little unsatisfying.
December 4, 2024
4.5 stars rounded up.
p 15: The girl suddenly stood up. Gracefully, athletically. The sun drenched her bare back and painted two tiny shadows around a pair of dimples quite low along the spine. She stretched and turned towards us. She loomed against the glowing sky and her reflecting glasses seemed to burn through me with black rays.
p 36: Her very name, the melodious combination of Lenka and Silver, seemed perfection. The quintessence of lyrical nostalgia. I was perfectly aware that I was succumbing to an illusion - after all, I wasn't exactly an adolescent. But I didn't care. Illusion - how beautiful you are! Linger yet a while!
p 41: I had long ago solved the problem of the essence of poetry. I knew that poetry was a temporary manifestation of psychophysiologic development, characteristic of the borderline between puberty and adulthood. Normal people bother about poetry only as long as they are virgins, in a sexual as well as a general sense of the term. When a person is young and green, he resents the fact that the world is full of injustice and hypocrisy, and he longs for beautiful girls, adventure, and all sorts of nonsense. Eventually all of this passes, the longing for girls is cooled by taking St Paul's advice (better to marry than burn) and by going to the movies; the longing for adventure is satisfied by detective stories and football. The handful of individuals who remain virgins in the non-sexual sense turn into real poets. And a certain number of others, whom the world has deprived of all forms of virginity, turn into male or female whores. It had long been clear to me, without undue bitterness, that I belonged to this last group, though not to its extreme wing, perhaps.
p 122: I crouched low in my seat and let my eyes wander over the faces around me and along the sections on the other side of the [boxing] ring. On that far side, the faces merged into a speckled backdrop; human countenances were transforming into nothing but black eyes and screaming mouths. Faces closer to me were carved into ritual masks by the razor-sharp klieg lights. The wooden structure gave off a musty smell, the smell of a forest with spit, urine, cigarette butts, and greasy paper. The crowd, responding to the age-old instinct of the arena, produced an almost unbearable din.
p 186: My indifference kept me from identifying with this editorial collective which had witnessed so many apotheoses and so many executions. I watched the proceedings like a disinterested spectator, and sub specie actermitatis my colleagues began to seem ridiculous and their petty actions incomprehensible. What were the motives for their despicable plottings and maneuverings? That ephemeral vanity called career, position? Comforts and pleasures? Fear? Jealousy? Surely such trivial lures would be pitifully out of keeping with the veneration accorded to these new, post-religious secular saints by the general public, a public insufficiently informed as always. Or were these men inspired by a naive, dogmatic faith? Though I was so much younger, less educated, and much more insignificant than they, I found such faith quite unacceptable because of its absurd dialectics of immaculate conception and black sin. Outwardly I professed orthodoxy, of course; the old fuckup with Kocour's manifesto had taught me a lesson. But with me all this was but a ritual, and it was hard for me to imagine that my colleagues might be moved by a real, deep belief springing from the heart and from the brain. It seemed to me preposterous to assume that the ridiculous figures sitting before me had solved the dichotomy of mind and heart that had baffled a host of spiritual giants, including the Doctor Angelicus himself.
p 15: The girl suddenly stood up. Gracefully, athletically. The sun drenched her bare back and painted two tiny shadows around a pair of dimples quite low along the spine. She stretched and turned towards us. She loomed against the glowing sky and her reflecting glasses seemed to burn through me with black rays.
p 36: Her very name, the melodious combination of Lenka and Silver, seemed perfection. The quintessence of lyrical nostalgia. I was perfectly aware that I was succumbing to an illusion - after all, I wasn't exactly an adolescent. But I didn't care. Illusion - how beautiful you are! Linger yet a while!
p 41: I had long ago solved the problem of the essence of poetry. I knew that poetry was a temporary manifestation of psychophysiologic development, characteristic of the borderline between puberty and adulthood. Normal people bother about poetry only as long as they are virgins, in a sexual as well as a general sense of the term. When a person is young and green, he resents the fact that the world is full of injustice and hypocrisy, and he longs for beautiful girls, adventure, and all sorts of nonsense. Eventually all of this passes, the longing for girls is cooled by taking St Paul's advice (better to marry than burn) and by going to the movies; the longing for adventure is satisfied by detective stories and football. The handful of individuals who remain virgins in the non-sexual sense turn into real poets. And a certain number of others, whom the world has deprived of all forms of virginity, turn into male or female whores. It had long been clear to me, without undue bitterness, that I belonged to this last group, though not to its extreme wing, perhaps.
p 122: I crouched low in my seat and let my eyes wander over the faces around me and along the sections on the other side of the [boxing] ring. On that far side, the faces merged into a speckled backdrop; human countenances were transforming into nothing but black eyes and screaming mouths. Faces closer to me were carved into ritual masks by the razor-sharp klieg lights. The wooden structure gave off a musty smell, the smell of a forest with spit, urine, cigarette butts, and greasy paper. The crowd, responding to the age-old instinct of the arena, produced an almost unbearable din.
p 186: My indifference kept me from identifying with this editorial collective which had witnessed so many apotheoses and so many executions. I watched the proceedings like a disinterested spectator, and sub specie actermitatis my colleagues began to seem ridiculous and their petty actions incomprehensible. What were the motives for their despicable plottings and maneuverings? That ephemeral vanity called career, position? Comforts and pleasures? Fear? Jealousy? Surely such trivial lures would be pitifully out of keeping with the veneration accorded to these new, post-religious secular saints by the general public, a public insufficiently informed as always. Or were these men inspired by a naive, dogmatic faith? Though I was so much younger, less educated, and much more insignificant than they, I found such faith quite unacceptable because of its absurd dialectics of immaculate conception and black sin. Outwardly I professed orthodoxy, of course; the old fuckup with Kocour's manifesto had taught me a lesson. But with me all this was but a ritual, and it was hard for me to imagine that my colleagues might be moved by a real, deep belief springing from the heart and from the brain. It seemed to me preposterous to assume that the ridiculous figures sitting before me had solved the dichotomy of mind and heart that had baffled a host of spiritual giants, including the Doctor Angelicus himself.
October 15, 2020
This is much more a satire on the Czechoslovak publishing industry under communism than it is a murder story (as insinuated by the blurb), but if you are interested in this period it’s still an enjoyable story. The main focus is the obsession that the narrator develops with the eponymous Miss Silver, but in the background we see the difficulties and also hypocrisies of the publishing world as it goes to ridiculous lengths to make sure that everything published fits with prevailing state dogma. It struck me that the narrator is a lot more ‘masculine’ than I remember Skvorecky’s characters being, which may just have been this story, but equally possibly an indication of how much writing and our expectations of it have changed in the past few decades. He’s still an author I would recommend though, and it may well be time to reread some of the books of his that I loved when I read them the first time around.
June 20, 2022
Miss Silver's Past is about a government bureaucrat's obsession with a woman with a mysterious past. He treats women as things, and has finally met his match in a woman who does not fall for his shtick. Miss Silver is clever and cautious, and the story is clever at times in portraying her ability to anticipate and fend off his attempts to "get" her (both physically and mentally). In addition, the inner workings of the Communist-era publishing world in Czechoslovakia were quite entertaining. The end of the book, when Miss Silver's secrets are revealed is not a big surprise, but it does help the reader fill in a few gaps. Really a nicely done work!
August 1, 2020
Przyjemna opowiastka z domieszką ciekawych rozważań obyczajowo-społecznych. Traktuje o kobiecie, w której zadłuża się redaktor pewnej gazety. Niestety jego umizgi spalają na panewce. Dzięki temu również przypadkowo odkrywa tajemnicę owej niewiasty. Momentami się dłuży, ale jak ktoś ma za dużo czasu, można przeczytać. Za to końcówka jest brawurowa.
May 16, 2017
A rather dull read. The blurb indicates that 'passions rise and suddenly there is a murder'.Well yes that does happen but only on page 260 in a book of 297 pages. In between we get interminable discussions about editing books to make them suitable for a communist regime. Yawn
August 15, 2023
I got a bit bogged down in the middle of this book. The publishing machinations in soviet era Czechoslovakia are very believable but longwinded. Glad i stuck with it for the final denouement-which was v cleverly done.
February 12, 2018
Samozřejmě opět výborný Škvorecký, on tu češtinu hladí. Ale u Lvíčete jsem poprvé cítil, že je to vymyšlené.
July 28, 2022
An absolute masterpiece, and the finest argument against the Communist mindset you are likely to find.
August 12, 2023
Škvoreckého môžem vždy a všade. Dodržal svoje zásady detektívky podľa pátera Knoxa a to, že je to skutočne detektívka, človek zistí až ku koncu príbehu. A vôbec mu to nevadí.
August 29, 2023
A compelling story from a unique writer. Also a backwards ‘whodunnit’. The murder happens in chapter 14 of 15.
November 3, 2014
Miss Silver's Past (Lvice, or The Lion Cub, as it was titled in Czech) is about how little we know about what we desire, and for how little we sell the things we thought most mattered. The narrator, Emil, is a cynical 32-year old hack of an editor at a publishing house in Prague in the late 1950s. At one time, he thought of himself as a poet, but now he thinks only of hanging on to his job by toeing the Communist Party line by publishing socialist realist crap and suppressing work that has actual relevance to readers' lives. Not that he wouldn't rather prefer to publish good books, but egotism is the shield which protects him from being courageous, and his comfort takes precedence. He also thinks of himself as a ladies' man, and has few qualms about stepping out on his devoted girlfriend. This carefully tended self-worth is upended when he meets Miss Silver, a beautiful young woman with raven hair and dark, impenetrable eyes. Attraction becomes obsession when she declines to fall for him, and eventually becomes all-consuming, but while Emil is self-serving, foolish, and oblivious, he remains honest, at least, to himself, which finally leads him to the elusive truth about Miss Silver. Skvorecky finely captures the different stages of longing, and particularly how, when we are denied the one we want, desire becomes all the more unbearable, and, lastly, how the hard truth, when we get it at last, can finally extinguish it.
April 25, 2016
Z hlediska narocnosti na literarni a kulturni rozhled je to celkem hardcore, ale rozhodne je to skvela kniha. Asi je nutne ji cist rozumne mlady/a (a mozna radeji stastne nez nestastne zamilovany (prost obeho bude ale asi jeste horsi), aby se clovek mohl protagonistovi smat, a ne se s nim ztotoznovat xD).
Jakkoliv mam problem se u Skvoreckeho knizek prokousat nekterymi useky, u Lvicete se mi to nestalo (a konec stoji fakt za to). Ale jak rikam, pokud mate kulturni rozhled trileteho ditete jako ja, pripravte si Google, budete to potrebovat ;)
Jakkoliv mam problem se u Skvoreckeho knizek prokousat nekterymi useky, u Lvicete se mi to nestalo (a konec stoji fakt za to). Ale jak rikam, pokud mate kulturni rozhled trileteho ditete jako ja, pripravte si Google, budete to potrebovat ;)
August 9, 2019
Škvoreckého hrdinovia, podobne ako napríklad Kunderovi (Žert), sú cynici trpiaci silným pocitom absurdnosti. Asi to bude tou dobou.
Niekde vzadu si však nechávajú romantické jadro, čo robí tie knihy zaujímavými. Pocit absurdnosti sexistickým poľovaním na ženy, ale samozréjme aj tu to nakonieco dopadne absurdne.
Prvý krát som túto knihu počúval cez rádio Vltava a teraz v čítačke, v podstate s rovnakým výsledkom. Kombinácia sentimentality a cynickosti na mňa jednoducho funguje.
Niekde vzadu si však nechávajú romantické jadro, čo robí tie knihy zaujímavými. Pocit absurdnosti sexistickým poľovaním na ženy, ale samozréjme aj tu to nakonieco dopadne absurdne.
Prvý krát som túto knihu počúval cez rádio Vltava a teraz v čítačke, v podstate s rovnakým výsledkom. Kombinácia sentimentality a cynickosti na mňa jednoducho funguje.
April 8, 2016
Not nearly as good as Swell Season. A bit annoying because he is obsessed with this woman, but she doesn't return the affection. He believes he is in love and she leads him on. It turns out she wants revenge on his boss. This is her past. He dumped her sister and she died in a concentration camp. Lots of literary discussion about whether to publish this nearly pornographic book, but a bit too deep. Claimed to be funny, but I was disappointed.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews