Martin Rajniš: Twenty Five Thousand Days of Memories

Martin Rajniš about the book: “… Really, I have a good memory and for many years now I’ve felt a need to share the stories that I’ve experience over the past 70 years. Fate brought across my path one lovely being, Magda (Křížková) Šebestová, who transferred my digressive 100 or so hours of storytelling into 900 pages of text, out of which she then formed into the 120 pages of this book a concentrated elixir of what, in our eyes, was the best. I also think the reader will like the beautiful photos, among others from my many exotic journeys, with over a hundred pictures here. The book is titled 25 344 Days of Memories, covering the entire 71 years of my life, in which I really went through a lot – a childhood in ancient Prague with all the various childraising experiments of my father, years of poverty and revolt against the Bolsheviks, the full 12 times I was arrested. And the four years I spent at sea, sailing on a tiny boat with one beautiful girl across the Atlantic. Passing along hundreds of thousands of kilometres through deserts, wildernesses, rainforests, floating the upper course of the Amazon, visiting the most distant corners of New Guinea. But also, as a professional architect, managing large ateliers with designs passing through my hands at a total of nearly 14 billion crowns in construction costs. Experiencing Paris as a homeless clochard and an internationally award-winning architect … 

Working with Magda (Křížková) Šebestová: I met Magda at the end of the Seventies, when in the harshest frost of Bolshevism, we worked on the pavilion for the exposition in Canada – me as a young architect, she as a hostess. I remember her even from the time when as a little girl she sang alongside Jiří Suchý in the cabaret Semafor. Then our paths failed to cross for many years, and it was only when she came to interview me for Xantypa that I remembered how she could ask questions, how she could put things perfectly, and above all how wonderfully she could write… so I made her the offer that we could try something together, writing my recollections, and she – thank God - agreed...