Arts Magnesia Litera Awards announced
Last weekend, the winners of the Magnesia Litera book awards for the best Czech books published in 2002 were announced in Prague.
Book of the Year - Stories from the Long Century
Pavel Zatloukal, the head of the Arts Museum in Olomouc, won the main
prize, the Book of the Year award for his "Pribehy z dlouheho
stoleti," or "Stories from the Long Century", featuring the
gems of Moravian and Silesian architecture built between 1750 and 1918,
and putting them in a broader historical and social context. This book was
also announced best work of non-fiction at last Saturday's Magnesia Litera
Awards ceremony in the beautiful Art Deco building of the Municipal
Library in Prague - an event which re-opened its great hall to the public
after post-flood renovation works finished.
As for the other categories, the Moravian poet Vit Sliva was awarded for
his collection of poems "Bubnovani na sudy," or "Drumming
on Barrels"; Emil Hakl's book "O rodicich a detech" - or
"About Parents and Children" - was voted best work of fiction.
Well-known translator Anna Kareninova received a prize for her rendering
of Louis-Ferdinand Celine's "Guignol's Band II". In the
children's books category, Martina Skala, a Czech-born author and artist
now living in California, was awarded for her charming book about a
violinist and his living violin "Strado and Varius". In the
category presenting outstanding acts in publishing, the Argo publishing
house was awarded for its history series "Historical Thinking and
Everyday Life". Publisher Vaclav Kadlec was honoured for the
Petra Hulova, photo: Petr Jedinak, http://www.jedinak.cz/
preparation and publishing of the complete works of Bohumil Hrabal, in a
category called outstanding contribution to Czech literature. And finally,
in the best debut category, the young Czech author Petra Hulova was
awarded for her novel "Pamet moji babicce," or "A Memory
for My Grandmother", which is unusually set in Mongolia. Radio
Prague's Jan Velinger spoke to Petra Hulova earlier this year and this is
what she had to say about her much praised literary debut.
"This book is my opinion in a certain time, now or a year ago, how the life is, how the world is. And for me it is about relations, about love, about disappointment, about bitterness, about such feelings, basic feelings for me. And in Mongolia I think life isn't polluted - maybe not the proper word - polluted by artificial phenomena like in Europe. Media, advertising, career maybe. So if I set the story in a Czech setting I couldn't avoid writing about such things. But I'm not interested in that, and I wanted somehow to write a rough, simple story about what life means to me."
Author Petra Hulova on her book "A Memory for my Grandmother," which won the prize for best debut published in 2002 at last Saturday's Magnesia Litera Awards ceremony.
