Photo: Jaroslav Mach, Radio Prague International
Pornography, sex shops and prostitution were all taboo in communist Czechoslovakia. And there was no sex education of any kind, neither in schools nor in teen magazines. So how did Czechs live without all that?
With no official sources, young people looked for what they could find about sex in world literature. In the 1980s Czech comedy Jen si tak trochu písknout (Just Whistle a Little), we find a dialogue between two young men referring to “a perfect rape scene” on page 242 of Alberto Moravia’s La Ciociara.
Lots of Czechs over the age of 50 can still recall the novel from which they gained information about sex in their youth. In a small survey for this program, a variety of titles came up, including Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Life of Klim Samgin by Maxim Gorky and novels by the Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe.
See the rest here.
Author: Libor Kukal