Tag Archives: Emil Hakl

Literary roundup: Hakl, Kurkov and a Croatian Iraqi Windy City

Czech writer Emil Hakl has a novel Of Kids and Parents and story collection On Flying Objects in English translation. Now Tinge Magazine has an excerpt from The Witch’s Flight, which is being published by Twisted Spoon Press later this year, in a translation by Marek Tomin, who previously translated Hakl’s novel. There is also […]

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Literary roundup: Polish crime (and a poet) and Czech art (and a writer)

There’s a burst of Polish crime in the UK this week starting at today’s Folkestone Book Festival with the appearance of A.M. Bakalar and Zygmunt Miłoszewski as part of Polish Book Autumnfest. Bakalar’s Madame Mephisto has been reviewed here, while I’ve only briefly noted Miłoszewski’s excellent Entanglement and will have a review of his recently […]

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Prague Writers’ Festival 2012

The Prague Writers’ Festival (PWF) kicks off on April 14 with a typically diverse and impressive list of writers coming to Prague to read and discuss their work. Festival director Michael March sees the event as an opportunity to acquaint the local audience with some major talents that are far less-known here than they should […]

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Czech literary awards and Prague festivals

The Czech Magnesia Litera award for the book of the year has gone to Michal Ajvaz for his novel Lucemburská zahrada (The Luxembourg Gardens). The novel is about a teacher in Paris named Paul who enters some kind of fantasy world where an unknown language is spoken when he accidentally types a word he hadn’t […]

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Czech writers being (re)discovered

The varied world of Czech literature, past and present, contains a vast store of work virtually unknown outside of the Czech Republic Nothing lasts forever, and the recent losses of Václav Havel and Josef Škvorecký emphasize the finitude of what was probably the greatest generation of Czech writers. Fortunately, there are numerous younger writers whose […]

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Martin Ryšavý wins Škvorecký Prize for Czech literature

An article in Czech Position on the 2011 Josef Škvorecký Prize going to Czech novelist, screenwriter and documentary filmmaker Martin Ryšavý for his novel Vrač. Continue Reading

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An exciting time for Czech literature

Czech writers such as Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal and Josef Škvorecký were an imposing presence in world literature in the last few decades of the 20th century. Today, a new generations of Czech novelists is beginning to make its mark. Coming off a recent appearance at the International Literature Festival Berlin, novelist Tomáš Zmeškal spoke […]

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