Příhody při shazování kůží

The burlesque Incidents in the shedding of skins, after which this entire collection of the author's prose is named, comprise the opening chapters of an intended novella that Thomas worked on primarily in May and June 1941; the surviving fragment depicts the defiant departure of Sam Bennet from a provincial small town to London, "the city of the eager dead," where the young man undergoes an absurd initiation. The second part of the volume consists of short, highly poetic prose pieces from 1933-1939. The texts are united by the author's wild imagination and symbol-laden style, touching on the mystery of death and human birth, the plot sometimes giving way to magical expression, and sexual obsession merging with religious imagery. The colliding clusters of imagery create a magically unsettling beauty.

Legendary Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) is one of the greatest lyricists of the 20th century. His poetry has been collected in translations by Jiřina Hauková and Pavel Šrut, his short story collection Portrait of an Artist as a Puppy (1940) was translated by Petr Pujman, his radio play Under Milk Wood (1953) by Antonín Přidal and his small memoir A Boy's Christmas in Wales (1945) by Petr Eliáš. With the publication of Tales of Skinning, the Czech reader gets Thomas's literary work more or less in its entirety.

Czech edition