Children’s and Young Adult

At Cross-Eyed Jim’s gunslingers’ café they don’t just serve freshly ground coffee, cakes and eggnog, but also literary treats. Ever since the librarian Boženka Oprátková set up the prison library and made life more bearable for the most hardened death-row criminals, the hearts of the villains have been moved by group readings and interpretations of literary works, and even their tastes have begun to change. This harmony, however, is disrupted by Dante Skunk Shakespeare, the greatest literary gangster of all time, shamelessly purloining all kinds of texts, from classic novels to timetables. The fight with the bookworm bandit ends in victory for the intrepid Czech librarian. Although she fails to secure the support of the hard men of the Wild West for a revolt against the Habsburgs, the cultivated spirit of their literary meetings is reflected in the character of the town. Marek Toman masterfully weaves together parody and paraphrases, paying homage to both low and high literature, as both of them have the power to set a crooked world straight: in the end the town of Sheydrem turns into Rowney.

Marek Toman (1967) is a graduate of Charles University’s Faculty of Arts, he has worked as a literary editor for Czech Radio and since 1997 at the Czech Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In addition to his own creative work, he is also a translator and editor. His first book for children was O Ryzce a Vraníkovi (Ryzka and Vraník, 2003). His subsequent novels turned to the past: Dobytí ostrova Saaremaa (The Conquest of Saaremaa Island, 2007) described the Crusaders’ conquest of the Baltics, while Můj Golem (My Golem, 2009) was loosely based on the story of Rabbi Loew. His prose for adults also deals with historical material and how it influences the present; for example, in the books Veliká novina o hrozném mordu Šimona Abelese (The Shocking Story of the Murder of Shimon Abeles, 2014) and Chvála oportunismu (In Praise of Opportunism, 2016).