Section Archive Czech Books
Praga Caput Regni – Prague destroyed by rain
There is a long tradition of poets writing about Prague, such as
Jaroslav Seifert and Vítězslav Nezval, and I was interested to find out
how contemporary, rapidly changing, Prague has inspired one of the most
interesting poets of the younger generation to find new ways to express
the
spirit of the city. Vít Janota has written a collection called, Praha
zničena deštěm or Prague Destroyed by Rain, and its subtitle is Praga
caput regni, the ancient Latin motto of the city. More
Lenka Reinerová: a café with many tables
Few writers are more closely identified with Prague than Lenka Reinerová,
who died last month at the age of 92. Although in the course of an
adventurous life she travelled the world, she loved above all to write
about her home city, and with her death Prague has lost one of its most
important literary witnesses. In Czech Books this week, we remember Lenka
Reinerová and her literary legacy.
More
Robots and Vigilante Vampires
Many people know the standard quiz question about who introduced the word
"robot" into the language - the answer being the famous Czech
author, Karel Čapek. Čapek wrote in the first half of the twentieth
century and, amongst many other things, can be considered to be the father
of Czech science fiction. Science Fiction and Fantasy are extemely popular
in the Czech Republic today and I was interested to find out more about
the
sci-fi world. So I met with the translator Jan Vaněk Jr., a very active
member of the Sci-fi fandom and asked him about the development of Czech
sci-fi since the days of Čapek. More
Věra Chase: the frustrated astronaut who became a writer
Věra Chase has had six books published. They include poetry and prose -
both short stories and a novel with the intriguing title, “Passion for
Peaches”. Věra hails from a Prague literary family and says that she
identifies closely with her home city, although she has travelled widely
and lived for some time in London. Her grandfather was one of the many
journalists thrown out of Czechoslovak Radio after the Soviet invasion of
1968 and the family was deeply mistrusted by the communist regime. Refusing
to succumb to stereotype and convention, Věra Chase continues the family
tradition. She is a writer with a strong and distinct identity, and
although many critics have tried to define her work, she continues to defy
typical literary categories. To talk about her work we met in her flat just
round the corner from the radio in Prague’s Vinohrady district. She began
with a poem in English.
More
Anthony Northey: Kafka and the Geishas
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” The opening sentence of
Franz Kafka’s story Metamorphosis is one of the most famous in world
literature. But the writer himself will always be something of an enigma.
Kafka was born in Prague in 1883 and spent nearly all his life in the
city,
dying at just 41 in a sanatorium near Vienna. A Kafka symposium was
recently held in the Czech capital and one of the most interesting talks
was given by the US-born Canadian academic, Anthony Northey. For many
years
he has been trying to piece together details of Kafka’s biography and
has
also been researching into the way Kafka interacted with his home city, at
a time when Prague was going through rapid and dynamic change. He has
managed to challenge some of the many myths that have become both the
blessing and the curse of Prague’s most famous literary son. When I met
Anthony Northey, he began by telling me more about his research into
Kafka’s Prague. More
Author of book on Václav Havel’s drama discusses work of former president
Václav Havel led Czechoslovakia to democracy and remains perhaps the best
known Czech political figure of modern times. But before spearheading the
Velvet Revolution, he was of course a world-renowned playwright. History
interrupted Havel’s original career for two decades, but now the former
president has returned to drama, with the long-awaited premiere of his new
play Leaving taking place in Prague later this month. To discuss the work
of Václav Havel, I recently went to New York University to meet academic
Carol Rocamora, author of the 2005 book Acts of Courage: Václav Havel’s
Life in the Theatre. More
Bohdan Bláhovec – Sceptical Slammer and Pilsner Urquell
Welcome to Czech Books - and to Czech slam! Slam poetry first came into
being in the United States in the 1980s and is basically a competition
between performance poets, who perform their work in front of an audience
who then decide who they think did the best job. Slam poetry has become
very popular in the Czech Republic in the past few years, with regional
competitions in many towns such as Plzeň, the hometown of my guest today,
one of the leading Czech slammers - Bohdan Bláhovec. Bohdan is a
23-year-old student at the Prague Film School and a two-time prize winner
in the Czech national Slam competition. I asked him how he first got
involved in Slam.
More
Richard Weiner: a European mind
In this edition of Czech Books we look at the work of Richard Weiner, a
Czech writer of the first half of the twentieth century, who was immensely
influential on his own and later generations of writers and yet today is
little read and little known outside the Czech Republic. Even within the
country, among the writers of the period of the First Republic, he is far
from being a household name. This neglect is very much undeserved, and one
person who has been trying to draw attention to Richard Weiner and his
legacy is the translator and literary scholar, Martin Tharp.
More
A new anthology presents three generations of Romany writers
It is estimated that some ten million Roma live in Europe – the
equivalent of the total population of the Czech Republic. But we hear very
little about Romany writing. A new anthology published by the Museum of
Romany Culture in Brno and called “Čalo vod’i” (Full Soul) is
helping to put that right, bringing together four decades of prose written
by Romany authors in the Czech Republic. All the stories were written in
the Romany language, and this attractive hardback edition with parallel
Romany and Czech texts offers rich insights into Romany life in this
country, past and present. The stories span a period from the 1960s to the
present day, and although some of the writers are already well known,
other
names will be quite new even to people familiar with Czech Romany writing.
The anthology was compiled by Helena Sadílková, who told me about the
process of putting together works by no less than twenty-one Romany
writers. More
Jiří Stránský: a doctor of prison sciences
As a writer Jiří Stránský has never had to look far beyond his own
extraordinary life story for inspiration. He was born in 1931 into an
influential Prague political family – in fact his maternal grandfather
even served for three years as prime minister in the 1930s. During the
German occupation Jiří’s father Karel survived Auschwitz, and as a
teenager Jiří took part in the Prague Uprising in the last days of the
war. But ironically, the family suffered just as much under the communists
after the war as they had under the Germans. They had never made any secret
of their dislike of both political extremes. Jiří was not allowed to
study and in 1953 was arrested on fictitious charges of spying. He was
sentenced to eight years in prison, much of which he spent working in a
uranium mine. Paradoxically, it was here that Jiří Stránský found the
inspiration to write. This was the time of the Stalinist purges, and he
found himself alongside some of the writers he most respected, including
the well known Brno poet, Jan Zahradníček. In a busy Prague café, Jiří
told me about how these writers became his role model.
More
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