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Czech BooksGateway to the world of Czech literature
Hello and welcome to Czech Books. On 1st December a great new source of
information about Czech literature was launched – an English language
version of the Czech Literature Portal. I went to visit Viktor Debnár of
the Arts Institute in Prague, which is responsible for the project, and
Jaroslav Balvín, the portal’s editor, to find out more.
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Current AffairsCzech Republic plans cultural commemoration for Karel Hynek Mácha bicentenary
Preparations are being completed across the Czech Republic for what will
undoubtedly be one of the biggest cultural events of the year. Next year
marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of perhaps the country’s
greatest poet, Karel Hynek Mácha. We take a look at the dozens of
international, national and regional events being planned.
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Current AffairsLiterary fraud as Vietnamese teenage writer revealed to be middle-aged Czech man
It was the literary sensation of the season, but now it has turned out to
be little more than a hoax. The novel ‘Bílej kůň, žlutej drak’
(‘White Horse, Yellow Dragon’) by a young Vietnamese girl living in the
Czech Republic won a prestigious literary prize for first-time authors and
was hailed by the critics as the first testimony of her generation. But in
fact the first Vietnamese novel was written by a middle-aged Czech man. Ruth Fraňková has more:
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Czech BooksIvan Klíma: a sceptic in the era of entertainment culture
The 78-year-old novelist, Ivan Klíma, is one of the best known and most
widely translated of all Czech writers, with novels like “Love and
Garbage”, “Judge on Trial” or “No Saints or Angels” acclaimed
worldwide. Nearly all Klíma’s work focuses on human relationships, in
particular between men and women, but at the same time he offers far
broader insights into modern Czech society. In a recent interview for Radio
Prague Klíma spoke about his latest book “My Crazy Century” in which
he looks back at the first half of his life including his years in a Nazi
concentration camp and his later flirtation with communism. But when I went
to see Ivan Klíma last week at his house in a leafy suburb of Prague, it
was to talk about the more recent past. I was interested in how he
perceives the years since the fall of communism. The Velvet Revolution came
suddenly, but did it take Ivan Klíma by surprise?
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Czech BooksPetra Hůlová: a child’s mixed memories of the grown-ups’ revolution
A couple of years ago in this programme we spoke to the young Czech
novelist Petra Hůlová about her epic novel of life in contemporary
Mongolia, “Paměť mojí babičce“ – which translates literally as
“Memory for My Grandmother”. The book has just been published to
considerable acclaim in English translation by Northwestern University
Press under the title “All This Belongs to Me”. Since writing it back
in 2002, Petra has been far from idle, publishing no less than four further
novels that take us from inside the mind of an ageing prostitute to the
steppes of distant Siberia. At the moment she is putting the finishing
touches on another novel, this time with a theme closer to home, spanning
the years just before and after Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution. With
the twentieth anniversary of the revolution just days away, I joined Petra
Hůlová in the Café Louvre, just above the spot in Prague’s Národní
třída (National Street), where it all began on November 17 1989. It was
here that the police violently suppressed a huge student demonstration,
causing a wave of protest across the country that eventually brought down
the regime. So I began by asking Petra about her memories of that time as a
ten-year-old child.
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Current AffairsLudvík Kundera awarded Seifert prize
The Czech poet, playwright and translator Ludvík Kundera was awarded this
year’s Jaroslav Seifert prize on Monday recognising his life’s work and
contribution to literature. The 89-year-old poet – a cousin of the
internationally renowned author Milan Kundera – was given the prize,
which includes 250,000 crowns in funds, at the residence of the Prague
mayor.
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Czech BooksEva Hauserová - The Time Travelling Writer
This week Czech Books met with the writer, feminist and environmental
campaigner Eva Hauserová to talk about her novel Cvokyně - or Madwoman -
before she left Prague to present it in libraries throughout the country as
part of national Book Week. Madwoman tells the story of a time-travelling
scientist and uses the science fiction genre to make darkly comic and
sardonic comments on Czech society of the 1980s. A newly revised edition of
the book was published last month and I first asked Eva to outline its
plot.
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ArtsReflections of modern Czech history in Simon Mawer’s ‘The Glass Room’
A Czech architectural landmark has provided the backdrop, and indeed
central theme, for a book which has been creating a stir in the literary
world. The Glass Room by Simon Mawer tells the story of a modernist villa
in a Czech town, from conception to construction, eventually to seizure by
the state. The Glass Room has been receiving a great deal of publicity
ever
since it was nominated for the prestigious Man Booker Prize. Over the
phone
from his home in Italy, author Simon Mawer voiced his bewilderment as to
why his book was proving so popular in Britain at the moment: More
Czech BooksTomáš Sedláček and the anthropology of economics
Unlike most of our guests in Czech Books, Tomáš Sedláček is an
economist, and an influential one at that. He is chief economic strategist
for one of the major Czech banks. But that does not mean that we are going
to be talking about numbers. Instead we shall discuss his new book,
“Ekonomie dobra a zla” (The Economics of Good and Evil), which has
attracted a great deal of attention in the Czech Republic and, amazingly
for a book about economics, has become an instant best-seller.
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One on OneUS translator Norma Comrada on how she learnt by translating Karel Čapek
Karel Čapek is one of the few Czech writers whose work has transcended
borders. Although he died prematurely, aged 48, during the dire year of
1938, in the course of his short lifetime he wrote over 20 prosaic works as
well as several plays and travel books. Many of these have been translated
into English – and our guest in this edition of One on One is Norma
Comrada, an American who translated several of Čapek’s collections of
short stories, and his 1938 play The Mother. I met Ms Comrada at a most
appropriate venue – Karel Čapek’s study on the top floor of his former
villa in the Prague area of Vinohrady.
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