Authors

Iva Procházková is an extraordinary figure in Czech writing for both child and adult readerships. She comes from a writing background (her father and sister are active littérateurs), has extensive experience of two cultures, and demonstrates in her writing great sensitivity for the needs of children today and how they view the world. In terms of literary criticism, most of her works are characterized by an insight into the thoughts of children, their expressivity, the grace of their language, and the interconnection of elements of realistic description and allusions to the supernatural. Iva Procházková is remarkable not only for her abilities as a storyteller, her knowledge of the worlds of children and the elegance of her prose: she has a permanent need to provoke the reader into asking questions of an existential nature. The high degree to which Procházková engages with her work, together with her finely wrought prose, have seen her join the select band of the very best writers for children working in Czech today. Iva Procházková’s earliest work was for the theatre; her status as a member of a politically ‘unreliable’ family denied her the more significant commissions. Although her play Venušin vrch [The Heights of Venus] was marked out for a premiere in Prague in 1975, it eventually opened a year later on provincial stages in Czechoslovakia. Other early works for the theatre include Postavení mimo hru [Offside] and Poslední život [The Last Life]. To some extent Procházková turned to writing for children in order to slip the tight rein imposed on writers by the totalitarian regime. Her first work for children – Komu chybí kolečko [Those Who are Missing a Wheel] – was published in 1980, although – perhaps somewhat paradoxically – she made her grand entry into children’s literature in Czech more than a decade later with Čas tajných přání [The Time of Secret Wishes]. It was while living abroad that the author developed her talents as a writer, there seeking out the mechanics of storytelling, some of which she subsequently disregarded, and honing her use of form. Many of her works were published in German before they were published in Czech. Červenec má oslí uši [July has the Ears of a Donkey] – the story of an incomplete family – was enthusiastically received in Germany a full eleven years before its appearance in Czech. Procházková never attempted to portray herself as being at home in a German-speaking context: indeed, her greatest literary success came with a book whose theme returns her to the Prague Lesser Town of her childhood. This work – The Time of Secret Wishes – is lyrical in tone (unusually for this author) and remarkable for the retrospective nature of the narrative. (It is true to say that the recalling of her own childhood is not a feature of the work of Iva Procházková in general.) In 1989 this novel received the German Prize for Children’s Literature. By the end of the 1990s, the system by which Procházková’s works appeared first in German and then in Czech had been reversed. Before this time, however, she published in German a quartet of important works. Středa nám chutná [Wednesday Tastes Good to Us], which was published in 1991 (in Czech in 1994), takes an innovative look at the life of orphans, children all alone in the world of adults and also when among other children. This work gave an early indication of the author’s ability to build a story of great ethical reach on the smallest of platforms, achieving this in part in this instance by her deployment of the supernatural as a secondary motif. Procházková makes use of the fantastical to provide the child with access to issues which otherwise may be beyond its social understanding. Pět minut před večeří [Five Minutes before Supper] – which appeared in German in 1992 and in Czech in 1996 – is an intimate work charged with these elements. Father and daughter squeeze their sharing of confidences into the few moments before mother calls them to the table. The author invests this miniature narrative space with a sense of ethical precariousness and a remarkable emotional reach. The girl discovers the truth about her identity; she learns about her (single) mother, about the disability which afflicted her after birth and the successful operation which made it possible for her to perceive the world by sight. Procházková pays undemonstrative tribute to harmony, love and humanity - a tribute which is clearly comprehensible to child readers and thought-provoking for older ones. The charm of the work is further enhanced by the delicate, poetic illustrations of Václav Pokorný. In terms of its composition and the development of its main and secondary storylines, the novel Soví zpěv [Owlsong; published in German in 1995, in Czech in 1999] represents one of the peaks of Iva Procházková's achievement. It is a description of the lives of German siblings who have Czech forebears. After the catastrophe of floods they are battling in their paralysed town in northern Germany with emotional problems and also for their lives. The author has succeeded in creating a many-layered work which is rich in psychology. It presents the adolescent reader with living models; it makes the case that heroism is very much a relative term and the path which leads to the right decision is often unusually complicated and painful. A second high point in Procházková's prose oeuvre is Únos domů [Home Kidnap; published in German in 1996, in Czech in 1998]. The broad canvas of this work, too, depicts a number of themes reflecting the problems of children today and their position in the world. Taking as its departure point the great conflict between an adolescent and his surroundings, the novel raises questions of guilt, punishment, and malicious gossip and the influence of all these on the fragile soul of the adolescent; it also investigates how adolescents crave understanding and love and how their ostentatious rejection of these makes them all the more necessary. While Owlsong can be characterized as an attempt to give a voice to the generation of children who reached puberty in the 1990s and Útěk domů [Fleeing for Home] is a work which calls for society to act, Procházková's next work Karolína [Caroline, 2000] belongs without doubt in the genre of "girls' fiction". It is clear from her subsequent works of prose for children that Procházková has continued her search for powerful subject matter. These later attempts, however, have failed to match the high standards the author set for herself in the mid-1990s. In Jožin jede do Afriky [Joe Goes to Africa], for example, attempts to convey a sense of mysticism and great mystery fail to convince; this tale of a journey feels rushed and contrived. In this work, the author is seeking to depict a world - that of African aboriginal societies - to stand in stark contrast with that of the schoolboys and schoolgirls of central Europe, and thus to make a declaration of multiculturalism; in this she is largely unsuccessful owing to the flimsy construction of the plot. Eliáš a babička z vajíčka [Elijah and the Old Lady of the Egg, 2002] - a series of fairy-tale-like episodes - also lacks polish, suggesting that Procházková's work has less power to communicate when she chooses motifs of the fairy tale over those of a more straightforward narrative. With Kryštofe, neblbni a slez dolů [Don't be Silly, Christopher, and Climb Down!; 2004] Procházková promises a return to the power of her earlier work, although this later work is inferior in its composition to Fleeing for Home or Owlsong. Here the author returns to familiar topics: the incomplete family, the efficacy of modern methods of upbringing. She also makes a passionate appeal for us to protect those among us whose defences are the weakest: children. Throughout her career Iva Procházková has maintained an interest in drama and dramatization. In the stage play Wo bleibt dein Hut? she develops a theme from Chekhov; in Erasmovy velké arkány [The Great Secrets of Erasmus] she portrays a great philosopher at odds with fanaticism. In 1990 Procházková contributed the screenplay for the television film Vdova po básníkovi [The Poet's Widow], and two years after this her debut book was turned into a three-part serial entitled Komu šplouchá na maják? [Who's Got a Slate Loose?]. Iva Procházková's other work for television includes Opičí rok [The Year of the Monkey], Poslední večeře u ptáka Noha [A Last Supper at the Foot Bird's], the screenplay for Fleeing for Home, and Cesta na sluneční ostrov [The Journey to Sun Island].

(mr)

This Profile was last updated on 1 April 2006

Deutsch Iva PROCHÁZKOVÁ, Deutsch.doc

En français Iva PROCHÁZKOVÁ, En français.doc