Written between 1954 and 1957 and treating events from the Stalinist era of Czechoslovakia’s postwar Communist regime, Midway Upon the Journey of Our Life flew in the face of the reigning aesthetic of socialist realism, an anti-heroic novel informed by the literary theory of Viktor Shklovsky and constructed from episodes and lyrical sketches of the author and his neighbors’ everyday life in industrial north Bohemia, set against a backdrop of historical and cultural upheaval. Due to its critical view of socialist society, Midway remained unpublished until 1966, amid the easing of cultural control, but a complete version of this darkly comic novel did not appear in Czech until 1994.

Alex Zucker’s recent translations include Heda Margolius Kovály’s Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street, Jáchym Topol’s The Devil’s Workshop (Winner of the 2013 English PEN Award for Writing in Translation) and Petra Hůlová’s All This Belongs to Me (Winner of the 2010 American Literary Translators Association National Translation Award).

Rajendra Chitnis, senior lecturer in Czech, Slovak and Russian literature at University of Bristol; Owen Hatherley, author of the best-selling Landscapes of Communism; and Jana Nahodilova, deputy language director at University of Britsol will also be taking part in the discussion.

More information about the event which will take place at the London — Piccadilly branch of Waterstones can be found here.