Literary fiction, Short stories
Nudists, dune experts, male prostitutes, Dante, water birds and Ducati motorcycles all intertwine in this collection of poetic short stories.
Petr Borkovec is best known for his poetry. His nine collections have been published in almost every European language, including English, German and Italian. This time, Borkovec has written a collection of short stories. The prose in Lido di Dante excels, with the author’s specific sense of humour, mysterious and dramatic atmosphere, poetic imagery and condensed phrasing. The twelve short stories take place in a resort near Ravenna, Italy. An unusual guide to this place of sunshine and darkness, Lido di Dante, sometimes brings to mind the Divine Comedy, the infernal scene of which Dante started to write in the eerie local pine forest.
Petr Borkovec (1970) is a poet, novelist and translator. He has worked as an editor for Lidové Noviny Publishers, Lidové noviny, Literární noviny, and the review Souvislosti. From 2005 to 2023 he was the dramaturge and host of the Prague literary café Fra. He writes regular pieces for the radio station Vltava, the magazines A2 and Qartál, and the online literary journal iLiteratura. He teaches at the Department of Creative Writing of the Academy of Creative Communication. He is a regular contributor to the review Listy. Borkovec made his debut in 1990 with the poetry collection Silent Table Settings (Pražská imaginace). His most recent books to date are the prose volume Cécile and the Others (Fra) and the children’s book Dictations (with Andrea Tachezy; běžíliška). The Baobab publishing house is preparing a poetry collection entitled Little Boats for publication in 2026. Borkovec has translated Russian poets including Vladislav Khodasevich, Vladimir Nabokov, Yevgeny Rein, Joseph Brodsky, and Yuri Odarchenko. Together with the linguist Matyáš Havrda, he has worked on translations of the ancient tragedians: they have jointly translated Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Euripides’ The Bacchae, and Euripides’ Medea. In 2027, a new translation of Sophocles’ Antigone will premiere at the National Theatre. Borkovec has published books in Great Britain, Italy, France, Slovenia and Romania, though mainly in Germany and Austria. Almost all of his poetry and prose has been published in German, and Borkovec received the Austrian Norbert C. Kaser Prize (2001), the German Hubert Burda Prize (2001), and the Dresden Poetry Prize (2024).