Word: kohouts
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...Kohout adopts a harsh, cynical style, over-whelming us with facts about medieval torture and penological fictions. In the first pages of the novel, Wolf's description of the role of the executioner, as the last judge rather than as a murderer, intrigues with its exuberance and simplicity, and tempts with its logic...
...KOHOUT ATTACKS THE coexistence of bureaucracy with the "just following orders" mentality in modern society. Most novelists would make a treatise out of the novel, but Kohout's gallows humor sharpens the images and situations in our minds...
...When Kohout describes Wolf and Simsa's pasts, the commonness, the very ordinary aspects of these people, is striking. They weren't born with a natural talent for killing; they didn't commit sadistic acts on their siblings. They are now executioners because they were good at following orders, at working within and for the system. They could just as well be gardeners...
...Kohout ironically places Wolf within an anti-Nazi resistance group while a high school teacher in a small Czech town. Called into the office of the local Commandandt, Wolf is easily intimidated and betrays the other members of the group, including his own brother. From them on, everything is easy for the executioner: he must hold no allegiance but to the state, have no love but for the state, take no orders but from the state. The government in power doesn't matter. The executioner owes his life and soul, not to politics, but to the essence of the state...
...executioner, as the model of modern man, learns to see the beauty of killing with precision, the simplicity of a perfected technique that kills a hanging man within 30 seconds. These are the values by which Kohout's characters live; stripped of their extremes, they do not seem far removed from...