SOURCE: Brownjohn, Alan. “Love after the Revolution.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5032 (10 September 1999): 21.

In the following review, Brownjohn traces Klíma's portrayal of love throughout the stories in Lovers for a Day.

These twelve short stories about love and lovers are selected from two collections representing quite distinct periods in Ivan Klíma's work. Neither book has been published in Britain, and Lovers for a Day thus provides a most welcome addition to the substantial number of remarkable novels already available in translation; several of which, like A Summer Affair, are addressed to the same favourite theme.

A date is appended to each story, and there is a wide gap between the last of the five earlier pieces, which is given as 1969, and the first of the seven later ones, from 1987; the rest of those being dated 1994. That long interval included most of the years during which Klíma's...