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Czech BooksRadka Denemarková and the importance of digging up skulls
The novel “Peníze od Hitlera” (Money from Hitler), is one of the best
Czech books I’ve read for a long time, and luckily for English-speaking
readers, it has just been published in an excellent English translation by
Women’s Press in Toronto. When it first appeared in Czech over three
years ago, Money from Hitler caused quite a stir; it won the prestigious
Magnesia Litera award, but Czech critics remained divided. Perhaps this is
no surprise. The author, 41-year-old Radka Denemarková, chose one of the
most sensitive and painful episodes of modern Czech history as her starting
point, a subject that for many remains taboo to this day. Her book goes
back to the days just after the end of World War Two, when tens of
thousands of Czechoslovakia’s German-speakers were being rounded up and
expelled from the country. It is no secret that the expulsions, especially
in these early stages, were often accompanied by acts of violence,
sometimes quite indiscriminate. In her novel Radka Denemarková literally
pulls these events out from the topsoil of the recent past, as we see in
the vivid opening chapter, when a small boy digs up a rather unusual object
in his parents’ orchard with his little green spade. Here is an extract:
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PanoramaA book of oral history reflects the views of ordinary Czechs on life under communism
A new book of oral history, published by Academia, takes a look at the
bygone communist era in the Czech Republic from the perspective of ordinary
people, that is, those who didn’t have any political ambitions. Compiled
by oral historian Miroslav Vaněk and his team, “Obyčejní
Lidé…?!,” or “Ordinary People,” provides a fresh take on life
under communism.
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MailboxMailbox
Today in Mailbox we quote from your e-mails answering December’s quiz
question and announce a new mystery person contest for January. Listeners
quoted: Hans Verner Lollike, S. J. Agboola, Ian Morisson, Sergei, Gordon
Martindale, Jayanta Chakrabarty, Charles Konecny, Charlie Cockey, Henrik
Klemetz, Colin Law, Keith A. Simmonds.
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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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Czech BooksBarbara Day and the Velvet Philosophers
Barbara Day works for a non-profit organization called The Prague Society,
promoting international links in business, politics and academia.
Twenty-five years ago, Barbara was doing a job that, at least on the
surface, seems very similar. Then based in London, she was coordinating
visits by Western academics to Czechoslovakia. But times could hardly have
been more different. In those days, such initiatives were seen by the
communist regime as a subversive activity. Constantly harangued by
Czechoslovakia’s secret police – the StB – visiting lecturers,
including some of the world’s most renowned philosophers, would meet
secretly at private flats. In what came to be known as the “underground
seminars” they would address small groups made up of students, dissidents
and anyone else brave enough to turn up, and lectures covered subjects as
varied as the philosophy of Plato and the music of Mahler. Barbara Day’s
book, The Velvet Philosophers, recounts the details of how the seminars
worked. When I met Barbara, she began by telling me how the seminars
started: It was in the years just after the 1968 Soviet invasion, when many
of Czechoslovakia’s top academics were thrown out of their jobs, and even
their children found themselves in trouble.
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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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Current AffairsChildren's publishing house Albatros celebrates 60- year anniversary
This year marks the 60 year anniversary of the famous children’s books
publisher Albatros, which had a monopoly on the market before the end of
communism in 1989 and remains to this day the publisher of the most
popular
titles in children’s literature. As part of the anniversary, an
exhibition in the Prague National Library gives children a chance to
experience the adventurous world of their favorite cartoon characters
firsthand. More
ArtsNew book collects posters that helped shape 1989’s Velvet Revolution
Exactly 20 years ago, during the Velvet Revolution, the country was flooded
with posters, both home-produced and professionally printed, calling for
change. They bore slogans like Free Elections, Teacher You Don’t Have to
Lie to Us Anymore, and Havel to the Castle. Now many of those posters have
been gathered in a fascinating new book.
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Czech BooksCzech history through a glass darkly
Hello and welcome to Czech Books. This week we're discussing the novel The
Glass Room, by Simon Mawer, one of this year's nominations for the
prestigious Man Booker prize. The novel, which has already been translated
into Czech and had a very positive local reception, is inspired by the
functionalist masterpiece, the Tugendhat Villa in Brno, and covers over
half a century of Czech history, focusing mainly on the fates of the Jewish
industrialist Victor Landauer and his wife Liesel. I met with a professor
of English Literature at Charles University's Education Faculty, Dr. Anna
Grmelová, to discuss in particular the book's depiction of the rich and
diverse cultural life of the First Czechoslovak Republic.
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ArtsHow the Velvet Revolution overturned the literary landscape
Writers were at the forefront of the Velvet Revolution. But when the dust
settled on the political changes they found a fast changing publishing
revolution underway that left some of them sidelined. We look at the
changes in the publishing and literary world over the last two decades.
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