Many people think of the earliest science-fiction as being exclusively British and French, but in fact a couple books about to be published by Jantar Press show that this is far from true. The Science of the Stars by Gustáv Reuss and Newton’s Brain by Jakub Arbes are two early sci-fi books from Slovakia and […]
“And this handsome but utterly stupid young man, who had never had to deny himself an eighth dumpling in his life and was playing at being a committed left-winger, even taking the liberty of professing a kind of ideological solidarity with her, he wasn’t even capable of finding out the most basic information about her […]
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 […]
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 […]
World Literature Today has issued its list of the 75 notable translations of the year and it includes three books that were excerpted in B O D Y as well as numerous writers, translators and publishers whose work has previously appeared in the magazine’s pages. An excerpt of Balla’s In the Name of the Father […]
“The German Casino in Růžová Street, to which Mr. Kopfrkingl had dragged himself with his leg behind him and his body bent forward, had a white marble-covered entrance with three steps. ‘I love white marble-covered entrances with three steps,’ thought Mr. Kopfrkingl and slowly crossed the street to the pavement opposite…” From The Cremator by […]
“…and he coughs decorously and goes off decorously to his study. Where he decorously. Straightens. Some papers. Slowly. Carefully. Tap-ping them. To cut off the edges. It’s very important now. To the millimeter exactly. At the edge of the table. And we’re each of us alone again… Ah, yes: childhood! Land of terror…” From Alexandra […]
Midway Upon the Journey of Our Life by Josef Jedlička, written between 1954 and 1957, might seem, on the surface, like a novel an English-language reader has some experience of. After all, Kundera and Hrabal have written of the Stalinist 50s – (Hrabal-readers most recently being granted access to his short stories from the 50s […]
The first week of B O D Y’s month-long Czech issue was finished off with a powerful short story, “Cedar and Hammer”, by the award winning writer Jan Balabán, whose literary output is all the more impressive considering he died at the age of 49. There is next to nothing of Balabán’s work available in […]
On June 18 New York’s Czech Center will be hosting the release of Heda Margolius Kovály’s novel, Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street. Heda Margolius Kovály (1919-2010) is most famous for her memoir Under A Cruel Star – A Life in Prague 1941–1968 but in 1985 she wrote her crime novel, finally translated this year […]
literalab 