Petra Hůlová’s latest novel translated into English (by Alex Zucker) is a provocative dystopian world where “men have been forbidden to be attracted to women on the basis of their bodies”. The Movement – the novel’s title – have opened centers to “reeducate” men, and as the book goes along you realize how the extreme […]
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 inaugural Cairo Literature Festival is underway in the Egyptian capital and with panels on “Writings of Youth Writers in Central and Eastern Europe” and “Eastern Women Writing between Egypt and Europe”, among others, there are a number of Central European writers present at the festival There actually aren’t any Eastern European writers there, unless […]
The latest issue of Words Without Borders is out and is devoted to Contemporary Czech prose. Edited and with an introductory essay by translator Alex Zucker, the issue includes writers who are likely little to totally unknown even to readers keeping up with contemporary European fiction. In his essay Zucker pushes at the political straitjacket […]
Marek Bieńczyk has won Poland’s top literary award for Książka twarzy (A Book of the Face). The Nike Literary Award (Nagroda Literacka NIKE) has been in existence since 1997 and has had Olga Tokarczuk, Wiesław Myśliwski, Jerzy Pilch and Czesław Miłosz among previous winners. Speaking of Miłosz this year’s Audience Award went to Andrzej Franaszek […]
From the works of Havel and Mácha to the Tata Bojs and a Hungarian vampire, Europe celebrates its literature What began as a Czech project called Literature Night has now spread from Prague across the continent, with Czech and European authors appearing and having their work read from London to Yerevan. In its fourth year […]
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 […]
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
Translator Alex Zucker will be presenting and reading from his translation of Petra Hůlová’s debut novel All This Belongs to Me (Paměť mojí babičce) as part of the European Book Club at 7:00 p.m. on October 26, at the Czech Center in New York. While a guest at the 2011 Prague Writer’s Festival Hůlová did […]
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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