At the end of the twentieth century, an elderly father and his middle-aged son walk the streets of Prague, stopping for one, or two, or more beers or juniper brandies en route. A retired scientist and a writer, respectively, they're easy with one another's expert interjections into a colloquy consisting of stories they've lived or heard that could be any Czech's; some of them could be anyone's, including the most outlandish, an insidious anecdote about urban cannibalism. Since the father grew up in World War II Croatia, where the Ustasi rather than the Nazis almost killed him, and the son turned 10 when Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring of 1968, they know what living in something close to hell is like, and graveyard humor courses through their palaver. At the end of their ramble, the son puts his father into a cab, and his nagging conscience makes him wonder how many more such outings there will be. Skittishly insouciant, direly funny, this is a small, Waiting for Godot-ish gem. --Ray Olson