In 1926, the communist avant-garde poet Konstantin Biebl (1898–1951)
travelled from Czechoslovakia to the Dutch East Indies. In his texts,
poetic and often comic, both landlocked Bohemia and the colonized
tropical islands are seen disorientingly anew, like “mirrors looking at
themselves in each other.” On This Modern Highway, Lost in the Jungle
takes the reader on a journey crisscrossing the poet’s life and work,
with particular attention to his travel writing and his dreams and
memories of travel, as they mirror the book author’s own life experience
as a Czech scholar of Indonesia living in island Southeast Asia.
Karolinum Press, Praha 2022, 235 x 165 mm, 628 str., čb., anglicky, ISBN 978-80-246-5112-5