The Prague book fair is underway and I had to take refuge from the Friday crowds of schoolchildren in my local café, which, as it turns out, is crowded with slightly older schoolchildren trying to look even older through chain-smoking and midafternoon glasses of wine. Book World Prague 2015’s Guest of Honor is Egypt and […]
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 […]
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 […]
“There is one kind of literature which never reaches the voracious masses. The work of creative writers, written out of the author’s real necessity, and for his own benefit. The awareness of a supreme egoism, wherein laws become significant. * Every page should explode, either because of its profound gravity, or its vortex, vertigo, newness, […]
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