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Article: Love, dignity flourish in a childhood under communism.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)
- Article from:
- Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
- Article date:
- November 4, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Wayne Lee Gay
``The Twelve Little Cakes'' by Dominika Dery; Riverhead Books ($24.95)
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Neighbors were secret police informers. Grandmother was a notorious Communist Party hack known as "the red countess." And communism itself "was like an old dragon that would occasionally crawl out from its cave and eat someone for dinner. As long as it wasn't you the dragon was eating, you could live with the sound of screams in the distance."
This was the world in which Dominika Dery grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in Czechoslovakia. And, despite the decaying post-Stalinist dictatorship that burdened the country, it was a world in which, ...