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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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Czech BooksPsycho for Kids and Baby Punk: Czech children’s writing since 1989
Czech parents may well be relieved to know that, if the latest studies are
anything to go by, their children are still keen readers. And what are they
reading? Well, how about Psycho for Kids and Baby Punk…? Such is the rich
new world of Czech children’s writing and publishing, post-1989. It’s a
world where poetry, music and visual art have come to overlap with some
surprising results. In reaction to four decades of censorship, just about
anything goes and there is little nostalgia for the old days. The
journalist Kateřina Kadlecová has taken a close interest in contemporary
Czech writing for children and teenagers, and she is my guest in this
week’s Czech Books.
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Current AffairsCzech publishers opposed to Google’s plans to digitise millions of books
The Google Books Library is a huge project under which the internet giant
aims to scan millions of books and make them available on-line. In the US a
court is considering a deal struck between Google and publishers that would
cover all books covered by copyright in the US, a deal which would see
copyright holders receive nearly two thirds of the price of books printed
to order from Google Books. Now the issue has come before the European
Commission in Brussels, with many in Europe wary of Google’s plans. Among
them is the Association of Czech Booksellers and Publishers. I spoke to its
chairman Vladimír Pistorius at a Prague centre bookshop on Tuesday
morning.
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Czech Books“The Chamberlain Effect”: When did World War Two really begin?
The 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two this week will pass
almost unnoticed in the Czech Republic. The reason is simple. For Czechs
and Slovaks the tragedy did not begin with the invasion of Poland, but a
full year earlier. With the Munich Agreement of September 1938, Britain,
France and Italy gave Hitler the green light to annex huge tracts of
Czechoslovakia and less than six months later, Nazi troops marched into
what was left of the Czech lands unopposed. So how did Hitler get away with
bringing a determined and well-defended democratic country under the sway
of the swastika, while Czechoslovakia’s allies stood by? The British
historian and politician, David Faber, has tried to answer this question in
his book, Munich: The 1938 Appeasement Crisis, which focuses above all on
the role of the British political establishment, in particular Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain. This is the most detailed account of the
events leading up to Munich to be published for several decades, and an
American edition is due out this month. I caught up with David Faber in
London, and we discussed some of the many aspects of a book that deserves
to become a classic.
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Czech BooksA cab on both sides of the road: Iva Pekárková’s London
One of the things I find most refreshing about Iva Pekárková’s writing
is that it is so untypical. Her books have taken us to New York, Nigeria,
and now London and Senegal, breaking the stereotype of Czech literature as
inward-looking and local. You may remember Iva talking in a past edition of
this programme about her autobiographical novel “Dej mi ty prachy”,
published in English as “Gimme the Money”, inspired by her experiences
as a New York cab driver. After New York, Iva spent several years back in
Prague and she also travelled widely in Africa, but for the last four years
she has been living in London with her Nigerian partner Kenny. It was there
that she wrote her two most recent books, the novel “Sloni v soumraku”
(Elephants in the Dusk) and a collection compiled from her popular London
blog, published under the untranslatable title “Jaxi taksikařím”. I
caught up with Iva during a brief visit to Prague. In a café round the
corner from the radio, she told me about her life in London, the
differences between the world of the book and the blog, and her plans to
complete an intriguing literary trilogy. But first she spoke of her love
for living in different places.
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Czech BooksThe magical world of children's book illustrator Štěpán Zavřel
There is a very long and rich Czech tradition of children’s book
illustration – from Mikoláš Aleš in the 19th century to Zdeněk Miler
(of Mole fame) and Jiří Trnka in the twentieth century. In fact, the
first picture book for children in Europe was produced by the Czech
educator Comenius in the 17th century. An important part of this tradition
is the illustrator Štěpán Zavřel (b.1932), a charismatic and influential
artist who escaped to Italy from communist Czechoslovakia in 1959 and
established the biggest centre for children’s book illustration in Europe
in a village 60 km north of Venice. This autumn, to mark the tenth
anniversary of his death in 1999, a collection of accounts by those who
knew him will be published and I met with an editor of this retrospective,
poet and translator Tomáš Míka, to discuss Zavřel’s importance for
the world of children’s books.
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