A little thread for #WorldBookDay. A year ago, as the Russian tanks rolled towards Kyiv, I took down a book I hadn't read for almost thirty years. 1/ 
The Miracle Game, by Czech writer Josef Skvorecky (pronounced SHKFO-rets-kee), deals with an apparent miracle in a Bohemian church as the Communists take power in Czechoslovakia in 1948. 2/
Is it a crude fake designed to discredit the church, as it appears to be at first? Or is it a real miracle? The book moves back and forth over the first quarter century of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia as Skvorecky's hero tries to solve the mystery. 3/
The book vividly evokes the black comic aspects of survival under a totalitarian regime. It's funny, tragic, bawdy and spiritual by turns. There is an unforgettable depiction of the Soviet tanks crashing through Prague in 1968. 4/
A typical scene has the hero attempting to leave the country with a female friend and her young children. Their little Skoda becomes snarled up in a column of Russian tanks. 5/
Eventually they are pulled over and searched, only for the Russians to be transfixed by the decadent Western underwear found in the woman's suitcase. The last sentence in this paragraph stayed with me for thirty years. /end
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