In commemoration of the death of Czech writer Jan Balabán ten years ago at the age of forty-nine, B O D Y editor Jan Zikmund has reviewed the English version of Balabán’s short story collection Maybe We’re Leaving, translated from the Czech by Charles S. Kraszewski.
He writes about how Balabán writes “quiet”, compact stories about people in crisis, set mostly in the writer’s native Ostrava, the Czech Republic’s steel country.
“For foreign readers, he might represent an attractive mixture of the familiar and exotic. Influenced by both American and Russian literature, his stories will delight the fans of Raymond Carver, John Updike, and Ivan Bunin, while being firmly rooted in Central Europe.”
Read the review here
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