Martin Vopěnka

O duši a dívce; Pohádky z hor

O duši a dívce; Pohádky z hor O duši a dívce; Pohádky z hor
Mladá fronta, 2016, 144 pp
9788020442192
Foreign rights:
Prague Literary Agency
http://www.praglit.de/
maria@sileny.de
Children’s and Young Adult

The mountains as a place full of secrets, concealing dangers and riches, a place of stories. In the collection A Girl and a Soul, the well-known novelist Martin Vopěnka introduces himself as a teller of fairy tales. In fourteen tales with an ecological message set in a mysterious, remote area of mountain ridges where silence still reigns, we meet the likes of an ageing raven, a shy marmot, a quarrelsome mouse and a lone wolf. The fairy tales, which occasionally turn into the author’s own interpretation of ancient myths, are accompanied by captivating pastel landscapes and animal portraits by the Japanese artist Iko Dekune. A selection of eight of these fairy tales has already been translated into English and was published in the Philippines in 2016.

Martin Vopěnka is a well-known novelist and writer of sci-fi, and he is also one of the few Czech authors of young adult literature: his Sleeping Secret (Spící tajemství, 2013, Fragment) was nominated for a Golden Ribbon in 2014 in the category of fiction for young people, and New Planet (Nová planeta, Mladá Fronta, 2015) won a prize in the same category. Vopěnka’s philosophical sci-fi novel The Fifth Dimension (Pátý rozměr, Kniha Zlín, 2009) was published in English and met with a positive critical response in the Financial Times and the Times Literary Supplement. As well as English, his books have also been published in Romanian, Russian and Arabic.

Praise

“The book gives children and also many adults an easy introduction to the laws of nature or even the principle of evolution. It reveals the magic of values that endure and effortlessly instils the reader with a love of nature and all living things.”

— Eliška Prokopová, iLiteratura

Mladá fronta, 2016, 144 pp
9788020442192
Foreign rights:
Prague Literary Agency
http://www.praglit.de/
maria@sileny.de