SOURCE: Naughton, James. “Recycling the Stories.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4672 (16 October 1992): 24.

In the following review, Naughton discusses the themes and sense of place in My Golden Trades.

It is bold, even in a volume as pleasant to read as this [My Golden Trades], to cite, several times in one story, the eternal verities of Ecclesiastes and to assert that, as well as using up “most of our fuel, our non-ferrous metals, our drinking water, our clean air; we've used up our stories as well,” “there is nothing new to add.” Ivan Klíma is admirable in eschewing pseudo-literary violent sensation, and in advocating the values of spirituality, charity and respect. It is perhaps timely for Westerners to be reminded, in a brief afterword, that banned writers in Czechoslovakia did not simply write about “repression, the secret police, prison and the cruel and bizarre practices of the communist regime...