Macedonian journalist and poet Risto Lazarov has recently added two new books to his Prague Manuscripts non-fiction series published by Vezilka 2011: The Slánský trial and other Czech fates, and Hrabal: The Sad King of Czech Literature.

The Slánský trial and other Czech fates is about the prosecution and sentencing to death of Czechoslovakia’s leading communist, who had been arrested in a brutal purge ordered by Stalin.

In the notorious 1952 show trial, Rudolf Slánský, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and thirteen other high-ranking communists, ten of them Jews, were accused of Titoism and Zionism. Eleven of them, including Slánský, received death sentences, to beexonerated during the Prague Spring of 1968.

Lazarov’s manuscript, according to the press release, addresses the Stalin era in Czech history, including the raising and the razing of his monument in Prague.

In Hrabal: The Sad King of Czech Literature, Lazarov writes about the life of Bohumil Hrabal—author of Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age; I Served the King of England , and Too Loud A Solitude—whom Milan Kundera considered the very best Czech writer.