“When I looked up again, I could see only that my father was stuffing the doll, leg first, into the stove, after the rags. You could see how these caught fire amid the orange glow of the embers, the doll taking only seconds to shrivel up into something unrecognisable, though the rags flopped about as […]
“I was born a feral beast. At the time of my birth, I tore my mother apart. It wasn’t on purpose. I think the circumstances caused it. There was a lot of blood in the hospital room. My father, who gutted animals as part of his occupation, couldn’t bear to look.” – from “A Western […]
B O D Y’s latest issue kicks off today and will bring new fiction, poetry, essays and interviews through the month of April. For my part, I will be publishing fiction from Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania with work by Ludovic Bruckstein, Krisztina Tóth, Sándor Jászberényi and Leonie Hodkevitch. The opening work in the issue is […]
I write to keep the train on course to crush meit’ll happen on a morning no less beautiful than thishands latticed in love like jailbars shall adorn every windowI am seeking death her silver in every living momentwords piled like cadaversa death camp of happiness – from an untitled poem by Karel Šebek, translated from […]
The Summer Issue of B O D Y, marking the magazine’s 10th year in existence, is out. Besides the usual mix of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and reviews, the issue includes the editors’ list of their favorite work published over the past decade. Stay updated with the Summer Issue here Read my list of my five […]
“Yes. The Mortkowitz funeral. I remember now. That was definitely yesterday.” Then, as if I’d suddenly turned radioactive, he spun on his heels and rushed away, leaving me to simmer in the soup of my bewilderment and humiliation. I felt that everyone was now looking at me, happy to have their attention momentarily diverted from […]
The nominees for the 2022 European Union Prize for Literature have been announced. The award is changing this year, with the jury choosing a single overall winner rather than one from each country. There are 14 nominees this year ranging from Ukraine and Georgia to Ireland and Spain. Among the selected writers is Slovakia’s Richard […]
“I would say that it is difficult to forget a language that you learned as a child, even if you learned it by force. A language in which you know all the games, the stories and songs. A language in which you made your first friends and have fond memories. It is possible, but it […]
“The woman walked across the terrace, sat at the table in the dining room, put the bird in her lap, and waited. There was probably something smarter one was supposed to do in such cases, but she didn’t know what it was. She’d heard that when a horse broke its leg, it always got shot. […]
The opener of B O D Y’s Winter Issue in 2022 is an amazing short story “The Relay” by the author of Aberrant, Marek Šindelka, translated from the Czech by Graeme Dibble. The story comes from Šindelka’s 2014 collection Mapa Anny (A Map of Ann). Read the story here Read my interview with Šindelka in […]
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