The biggest Czech literary awards were given out last night and the Book of the Year went to Radka Denemarková for Hodiny z olova. Best Prose went to the prolific and inimitable Pavla Horáková for Teorie podivnosti (A Theory of Strangeness) while Discovery of the Year went to Probudím se na Šibuji (I Wake Up […]
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 […]
Yuri Andrukhovych came to Prague’s Forum 2000 more as a journalist from a country very much in the center of debates about political liberties and freedom of the press than as the writer of the postmodern absurdist novel Perverzion. At the forum itself he discussed the situation of Ukraine and its beleaguered yet extremely resilient […]
In its 16th year in Prague Forum 2000 begins its first full day today after kicking off with an opening ceremony last night that included Joan Baez singing “We Shall Overcome” and will now follow up with discussion panels on the state of the media that may well disagree with Ms. Baez’s sentiments. We shall […]
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 latest issue of the University of California at San Diego’s literature in translation magazine Alchemy includes Slovak actor/singer/writer Július Satinský’s Dostoevsky’s Letter translated by Magdalena Mullek. If you haven’t already been tempted to read it then a look at the story’s byline should more than convince you: “A letter from Fyodor Mikhailovich, of Great […]
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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