Many of Kundera's stories are set in Czechoslovakia in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Learn more about the political history of Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) since World War II. What major political and social upheavals has the country experienced? How has the country's political climate affected the life and work of Kundera? How are the social, political, and economic conditions of the nation different now from the time in which "The Hitchhiking Game" was first written and published?

The greatest Czech fiction writer of the first half of the Twenthieth Century was Franz Kafka. Learn more about the life and work of Kafka and the social and political climate in which he wrote. Like Kundera, Kafka's work was also banned in his own country—although not until years after his death. Pick one of Kafka's short stories to...