http://radio.cz/en/article/145485 Czech books - a fortnightly feauture looking at Czech writing today en Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:01:00 +0100 Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:01:00 +0100 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Radio Prague CMS 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Radio Broadcasting cr@radio.cz (Cesky Rozhlas) webmaster@radio.cz (CRo Webmaster) http://radio.cz/en/article/145485 Here is a question for the Dickens bicentenary. What is the connection between the great 19th century English novelist and the best-loved Czech literary anti-hero? The answer is, surprisingly enough, that without Dickens we quite possibly wouldn’t have Švejk at all. David Vaughan looks at this and some other Czech links with Dickens in this week’s Czech Books. Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:91461ca9-5a93-537a-894e-2df5e4731042 http://radio.cz/en/article/145094 It seems very strange to be talking about the Czech writer Hana Andronikova in the past tense. When she died of cancer on December 20th last year, she was only 44, and until the last months of her life had been at the height of her creative powers. Author of two successful novels, several plays and numerous short stories, she was one of the most versatile younger Czech writers, and will be hugely missed. David Vaughan looks at her life and work. Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:4a724bd3-8768-560c-b0c4-f40762286a62 http://radio.cz/en/article/144964 In the last days of World War II, nine-year-old Ota Heller picked up a revolver and fired it at a German soldier. He did not wait to see if the man was still alive. For decades afterwards he talked to no one about the experience, and only recently has Ota Heller – or Charles Ota Heller, as he is now called – felt able to return to his memories of the war, collecting them in his book “Out of Prague”. In this week’s Czech Books he talks to David Vaughan. Sat, 21 Jan 2012 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:a8834833-615c-5f69-8402-29a0d8eb6a38 http://radio.cz/en/article/144792 In a recent edition of Czech Books we looked at the Prague-inspired poetry of the Scottish poet, Edwin Muir. But it was not just in his poetry that Muir evoked the atmosphere of the Czech capital. David Vaughan finds out more in this week’s Czech Books. Sat, 14 Jan 2012 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:c2e7328e-00eb-5dc4-a6ce-b4b6faa441d3 http://radio.cz/en/article/144252 When Jan Novák describes himself as Miloš Forman’s autobiographer, he is not entirely joking. He really did co-write the most famous Czech-American film director’s memoirs, and Forman himself has spoken of the book as “my life as lived by Jan Novák”. But Jan Novák is a great deal more than a biographer. Sat, 31 Dec 2011 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:a87e4a09-7088-5db7-b923-9af34b08c161 http://radio.cz/en/article/144030 What happens when five women poets writing in five different languages meet on the edge of a Hungarian lake? As we find out now in Czech Books, the experience can offer rich insights into what different languages and cultures have in common, and where they differ. David Vaughan talks to the poet Kateřina Rudčenková. Sat, 17 Dec 2011 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:bbe9c572-582c-5891-9007-c8482e134e81 http://radio.cz/en/article/143895 Last month was the end of an era in Czech poetry. The man who practically embodied the poetic underground of the 1970s and 80s, Ivan Martin Jirous – alias Magor, or Loony in English – died at the age of 67. Not only was Magor one of best Czech poets of his generation, but also the driving force behind the underground rock scene. He embodied the longing for rebellion and freedom, as so-called “normalization” sucked the air out of Czech and Slovak society. In Czech Books, David Vaughan talks to one of Magor’s close friends and associates. Sat, 10 Dec 2011 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:ba4b59d1-d06f-5108-b249-d62c6c62cd4d http://radio.cz/en/article/143502 In this programme we go south of the border, to explore some intriguing Czech literary and other cultural links with Mexico, stretching right back to the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Bernie Higgins begins by recounting an extraordinary episode from the mid 19th century. Sat, 26 Nov 2011 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:e50e3c99-87ae-5785-8596-a438fc7a1f1c http://radio.cz/en/article/143277 Last month we heard the sad news of the death of Ewald Osers at his home in England at the age of 94. Born in Prague at a time when it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Osers was an outstanding linguist and a brilliant translator. Over the decades he translated dozens of Czech writers and poets into English, and was equally well known for his translations from German. David Vaughan looks back at a fascinating life. Sat, 19 Nov 2011 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:0b0b52f3-35a0-58ad-ae64-4ba473119225 http://radio.cz/en/article/143155 A few days ago the Booker Prize winning Irish writer John Banville was in Prague, to receive one of Europe’s most coveted literary awards, the Franz Kafka Prize. David Vaughan took the opportunity to talk to the writer about his work and his fascination with the cultural and literary world of Central Europe. Sat, 12 Nov 2011 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:67a75442-08fe-52a1-a650-36c040df81f0 http://radio.cz/en/article/142769 The best-selling American writer Robert Fulghum has such an enthusiastic following in the Czech Republic that he has published several of his books here in Czech translation before they have even appeared at home. That includes his latest book, “If You Love Me Still, Will You Love Me Moving?” Its subtitle “Tales from the Century Ballroom” hints at its theme – that most passionate of ballroom dances, tango. Last week Robert Fulghum was in Prague to promote the book, and found time to pay a visit to the radio. David Vaughan met him. Sat, 29 Oct 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:5233da04-0497-553b-8dbb-704fcf0e94dd http://radio.cz/en/article/142433 This year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore has a special significance for Czechs, as we find out in this week’s Czech Books. Sat, 15 Oct 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:8dc5f1db-471c-577c-8134-5f6b1a366661 http://radio.cz/en/article/142086 This week would have been the 98th birthday of Edith Pargeter, an English writer who translated many of the Czech classics. You may well have come across her under the penname Ellis Peters that she adopted for much of her fiction. Under this alias she created two of the most famous fictional detectives in twentieth century crime writing, Sergeant George Felse, and the medieval monastic sleuth Brother Cadfael. In Czech Books this week, David Vaughan explores Edith Pargeter’s special relationship to Czechoslovakia. Sat, 01 Oct 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:e98955aa-b66e-56c6-9dd9-2b5d12169245 http://radio.cz/en/article/141874 In Czech Books this week we find out about the life and times of an English-born Renaissance poet who spent nearly all her life in Prague and in her time was more celebrated than Shakespeare. David Vaughan has been exploring the life and work of “Westonia”. Sat, 24 Sep 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:980669c3-f895-5301-b814-da9c0a64fbc7 http://radio.cz/en/article/141276 We have reached the ninth and final part of our serialized reading of “If I had been a boy, I would have been shot…” by Jaroslava Skleničková. The war is over, and Jaroslava’s account takes us from the traumas of her return to the present day, and her life with her husband Mirek in the new Lidice. But first, David Vaughan sums up the story so far. Sat, 03 Sep 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:ed7327ce-ee8d-59d3-9f75-ab83e22f4082 http://radio.cz/en/article/141191 In the last few weeks Veronika Hyks has been reading from the memoirs of Jaroslava Skleničková, an extraordinary story of survival in war. We have now reached May 1945. After nearly three years in Ravensbrück, the women of Lidice are now free, although they still face the trauma of returning home to find that the village has been wiped off the map and that all their menfolk and nearly all their children are dead. David Vaughan introduces the eighth episode. Sat, 27 Aug 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:36dee2a6-609e-5466-af72-aa38860d5e10 http://radio.cz/en/article/140505 Over the last few weeks, the actress Veronika Hyks has been bringing us extracts from Jaroslava Skleničková’s memoirs, “If I had been a boy, I would have been shot…”. The book tells the moving story of how Jaroslava was sent with the other women from her home village of Lidice to the Ravensbrück concentration camp near Berlin, after the Nazis razed the entire village to the ground in June 1942. The men of the village were shot in cold blood, and nearly all the children were gassed in Poland, but throughout their stay in Ravensbrück, the women had no idea of their fate. As the end of the war drew close, Jaroslava, together with her mother and sister, were marched out of the camp, together with hundreds of other women. David Vaughan brings the story up to date. Sat, 06 Aug 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:d19f4ab4-5662-54cf-9d92-61b15fc02776 http://radio.cz/en/article/140473 We have now reached the sixth part in our serialized reading of “If I had been a boy, I would have been shot…”, the memoirs of Jaroslava Skleničková. Veronika Hyks has been reading the story of Jaroslava’s childhood in Lidice, brought to a violent end in June 1942, when the Nazis decide to wipe away any trace of the village. Jaroslava – or Jaří – is the youngest of the women of Lidice to be sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and she is there with her mother and sister, Míla. Nobody dares to think about what might have happened to the men and the children of the village. David Vaughan brings us the story so far. Sat, 30 Jul 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:af818951-8bda-58d0-b110-9102cc949744 http://radio.cz/en/article/140237 In Czech Books we hear the fifth part of Jaroslava Skleničková’s moving memoirs, “If I had been a boy, I would have been shot…”, read by the Czech-British actress, Veronika Hyks. After the assassination of the Nazi Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, the “Butcher of Prague”, Reinhard Heydrich, the Czech village of Lidice was chosen for complete destruction on the night from 9-10 June 1942. Jaroslava – or Jaří – was among 184 women from the village sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. David Vaughan gives us the story so far. Sat, 23 Jul 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:a9784bdd-d753-593f-81ae-4b31cb2856b2 http://radio.cz/en/article/139935 We continue with the fourth episode of “If I had been a boy, I would have been shot…” by Jaroslava Skleničková, in which she tells the extraordinary story of her life following the destruction of her home village of Lidice at the height of the Nazi occupation in June 1942. David Vaughan gives us the story so far. Sat, 09 Jul 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:c98f6974-9f69-5f4f-9467-2de17d549f04