These short stories by the renowned poet offer polished texts which surprise us with their paradoxes and stylistic experiments.

Literary fiction, Short stories

Sylva Fischerová’s new stories are relatively short but have clearly been pared to the bone, to a pure crystalline form which is sustained by atmosphere and style and yet raises profound questions and highlights original and unclichéd paradoxes. They are built up vividly, laconically, playfully, but also with sophistication: we have the interweaving of high and low culture, the past with the present, dialogue with narration, literature with life. The result is a remarkable collection of short stories which is neither developing nor recycling previous ideas, instead it offers the best prose that Sylva Fischerová has written and ranks amongst the top contemporary Czech prose.

Sylva Fischerová (1963, Prague) is a Czech poet, writer and classical philologist. She was born in Prague, but she lived in Olomouc until the age of eighteen. Her debut publication The Tremor of Racehorses / Chvění závodních koní (Bloodaxe Books, 1990) was released in 1986. She is the author of twelve poetry collections, and also writes short stories, novels, children’s stories and academic papers. Her poems have been translated into many languages, three books having been published in the UK and the USA, with her works of prose being published in various languages including English, German, Dutch, Portuguese and Polish. Her work has also been incorporated into two albums by the singer Monika Načeva. In 2018 Fischerová became the first Poet Laureate of Prague, the city where she lives and lectures on ancient Greek literature, theology and philosophy at Charles University. Her most recent published works include a love story set in 1980s Prague entitled Elza and the Toadstool / Elza a muchomůrka (2022) and the poetry collection A Different Life. Wittgenstein / Jiný život. Wittgenstein (2023).