Literary fiction
Originally commissioned for a French series of alternative guidebooks, Hodrová’s novel is a conscious addition to the tradition of Prague literary texts by, for example, Karel Hynek Mácha, Jakub Arbes, Gustav Meyrink and Franz Kafka, who present the city as a hostile living creature or labyrinthine place of magic and mystery in which the individual human being may easily get lost. Suffused with the atmosphere of the year following the fall of the Communist regime, Prague. I see a city… takes the form of a novel of quest, in which the heroine abandons the material world of everyday society and linear history, perceiving it as false, temporary and distracting, and journeys in search of her true identity.
(Description from the English edition)
More information in Polish on the publisher’s website.
Information about the original Czech edition
Other selected published translations (3)
Prague : Visite privée French
Visioni di Praga Italian
Prague. I see a city… English