The winners of the prestigious Czech literary award were announced on 4 April. The ceremony was broadcast live by Czech Television.

Magnesia Litera — Book of the year

Bianca Bellová: Jezero (The Lake)

Set near a lake that is drying up and ominously pushing out its banks, this novel is an archetypal story of the coming of age of a young hero who fights his way out of a tough environment as he searches for his roots in the contaminated soil of his devastated lakeland home.

Magnesia Litera — Prose

Marek Šindelka: Únava materiálu (Material Fatigue)

The hero of this book is an unnamed teenage refugee. He finds himself in a foreign country in the middle of Europe, which in his eyes looks like nothing more than a complex of fences, overpasses, railway corridors and warehouses. An unknown territory, which to him seems distant and hostile. Travelling through the cold winter landscape, he is denied real life, moving like a shadow on the periphery of the land and society. Šindelka’s narrative follows this boy’s perilous journey, as he tries to get to a city in the north he had been heading to with his older brother, Aamir, before they were split up by traffickers.

Magnesia Litera — For children and young adults

Tomáš Končinský, Barbora Klárová & Daniel Špaček: Překlep a Škraloup (Typo and Skim)

Typo and Skim are “imps-entropists” whose task is to make everything grow old in chaos under the reign of the Ravages of Time. Typo the imp attends the Things Ageing Primary School, where he learns how to wear down things to decay thoroughly. He especially focuses on making grammatical errors in books. However, when on a trip to the world of humans, he finds out that they do not like things ageing. Therefore, he and his friend Skim decide to stop the Ravages of Time…

Magnesia Litera — Poetry

Milan Ohnisko: Světlo v ráně (Light in the Wound)

Milan Ohnisko reaches for eternity with his unique sense of fleeting detail and his essential observations. He is able to view the things which diminish in life and with life as both rarities and simple oversights; with eyes which are simultaneously gentle and stern. His memories of youth and childhood are sensuously full, as well as full of mystery.

The complete list of winners can be found on the Magnesia Litera website.