The Guinea Pigs is a chilling fable about dehumanization and alienation representing Vaculik's vision of the menace of Soviet domination in the wake of the 1969 invasion. Written in 1970, it is a sweeping condemnation of totalitarianism, embedded in a rich, imaginative, highly experimental narrative. In the words of the New York Review of Books it is "one of the major works of literature produced in postwar Europe."

EXCERPT
There was one guy we didn't invite to the orgy. We invited everyone else: Solaire because she's crazy and John and Walt because they're both so good-­looking and they're dating anyway, and we invited Amy because everybody just loves Amy. We even invited Miranda just because she's the jealous type, and since her sister was in town we threw the door open to her sister, too. But there was this one guy we didn't invite.

The stories in The Guy We Didn't Invite to the Orgy—funny, surprising, compassionate, true to life—are about people navigating the trickiest of landscapes: a world full of other people. Each of these characters wants to know, in her or his own way, given the crazy ups and downs and ins and outs of relationships, is it better to go it alone, or is it better to try to carve out a place for yourself, whatever it takes?