The PEN World Voices festival is underway in New York, running from April 29 to May 5. There are a lot of great events, including Mikhail Shishkin speaking on a panel about book reviewers, a conversation with Polish author of Russians in Warsaw Agata Tuszyńska, a Literary Safari including Hungarian Noémi Szécsi and Czech Michal […]
Kateřina Tučková has been awarded the 2012 Josef Škvorecký Prize for her novel Žítkovské bohyně (The Goddesses of Žítková). She beat out finalists such as Michal Ajvaz and Marek Šindelka for her book about mystical women in the White Carpathian mountains. Read more about Tučková, her work and check out the cool trailer for the […]
The latest edition of Bookslut has Jessa Crispin’s interview with Claudio Magris, conducted in Trieste. He talks about Trieste itself, its literary culture and his relation to it. He also discusses his novel Blindly and, of course, Danube. Always fascinating. Bookslut also has an excellent review of Gombrowicz’s Diary by Daniel Shvartsman though he mistakenly […]
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 […]
The newly established Czech Book Award (Cena Česká kniha) has announced its shortlist of 20 titles out of 109 titles submitted by Czech publishers. A list of seven finalists will come out in April and the winner will be announced as part of Book World Prague on May 19. Shortlisted authors that can be read […]
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 […]
“When the great actor Norinski entered the National Café, which is located in front of Prague’s Czech Theater, at three o’clock in the afternoon, he started a little – but then immediately smiled his most disdainful smile.” This is the opening line of the short story “King Bohush” by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in […]
A selection of fiction from the Czech Republic to Russia noted by critics in the year’s “Best of” lists The “Best of” lists that come out at the end of the year tend to confirm received opinion for the most part and so it is not a big surprise that translated fiction does not make […]
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