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."