Nine key events of Czech(oslovak) history in a caustic, ironic, dismal, as well as playful, hyperbole.

This monumental comics series by experienced historian and journalist, Pavel Kosatík, looks back at key moments of Czech history – from the foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918 to its separation into the States of the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1992. The first medium for Kosatík’s scripts was Czech Television; concurrently with the broadcasting of the series, the Mladá fronta publisher started publishing comic books, which, based on (more or less) modified Kosatík scripts, were always drawn by different cartoonists, usually one generation younger. This is the reason for the different mood of each comic book: the volume Jak Gottwald zavraždil Slánského (How Gottwald Murdered Slánský, 2014) is extreme, suggestive, greatly conceived by Vojtěch Mašek’s non-standard drawings; by contrast, the playful collages in Jiří Husák’s work Jak z rock’n’rollu vznikla Charta 77 (How Charter 77 Arose out of Rock’n’roll, 2016) creatively use contemporaneous photos of Václav Havel and other dissidents, as well as pictures of men in police uniforms. A distinctive approach was presented by Karel Jerie; in his work Jak Dubček kapituloval v Moskvě (How Dubček Capitulated in Moscow, 2016), he added dinosaur heads to the bodies of Czech and Soviet communists, accurately depicting the physiognomies of the historical figures even in this form. Kosatík and the cartoonists he cooperated with have created more than just trivially educative works: their comics are inspirational, provocative and original, while depicting the historical events honestly and suggestively

Read an excerpt from the book here.

The true stories of three women, of different ages and nationalities, whose lives were affected by work camps during World War II.

‘Totální nasazení’ (total deployment) or ‘Totaleinsatz’ in German, was a term for forced labour during the World War II German occupation of Czechoslovakia. This comics, by three pairs of authors and illustrators, presents distinct stories about three women. Helena, Jarmila and Franciska’s lives are connected by forced labour. Helena, who was born into a Czech Jewish family in Ukraine, escapes from a labour camp and is constantly on the run. Jarmila signs up to work for the Nazis voluntarily, as she was cooperating with the resistance movement. She hopes that she can hide there from the Gestapo. Franciska was born shortly before the end of the war to a Polish mother and Czech father, who fell in love in a labour camp in Germany. After the war ends, she spends most of her childhood in communist orphanages. The different styles of the three artists complement the stories. Karel Osoha’s illustrations shift abruptly between cold muted browns and purples when Helena is on the run, and brighter colours as she recalls her life before the war. Tomáš Kučerovský’s dynamic use of close-ups and text-less panels add a new dimension to Jarmila’s story, that readers can find familiar. Petra Josefina Stibitzová’s fragile, almost child-like pencil and crayon drawings reflect Franciska’s parentless childhood. This comics is produced in cooperation with Post Bellum, an organisation which aims to increase public knowledge of Czech 20th Century history.

About the authors:

Ondřej Nezbeda (1979) is a journalist and author. From 2007–2014, he was an editor of the Respekt weekly magazine. Nezbeda has also worked as a meteorological observer, hospice carer and television dramaturge. In 2016, he published his first book, Průvodce smrtelníka (A Mortal’s Guide), about care for the dying, which won the Magnesia Litera Award for Discovery of the Year.

Tomáš Hodan (1980) is a screenwriter and director. In 2002, he graduated from the Zlín Film School and since then has written and directed a number of awardwinning short and feature-length films. As a documentary filmmaker, he has filmed in Angola, Afghanistan, Syria, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Cyprus. Since 2014, he has been writing scripts for the popular satirical series, Kancelář Blaník (Blaník Office), loosely inspired by the British comedy series The Thick of It.

Petra Soukupová (1982) is a prose writer, screenwriter and dramaturge. So far, she has published five books for adults and two for children. She also writes short stories. Soukupová’s bestselling books have received a number of awards and have been translated into seven languages. Preparations are underway for a film based on her short story, Na krátko (Cut Short), with a planned release date in 2018. As a screenwriter, Soukupová worked on the successful sitcom, Comeback (2008–2010), and the satirical series, Kosmo (2016). Her books have sold close to 90,000 copies.

The poetic title of the book Fánek the Starsailor refers to a boy’s vivid recollections of his father during a long separation. Margarita Khavanski’s dream-like illustrations help to give the story its unique atmosphere.Fánek recounts the times he spent with his dad reading a golden book about the biblical flood, around which they wove a shared fantasy of an ark floating through the starry sky. Shortly afterwards, his dad has to go far away for work, leaving him to deal with sad but ultimately routine worries about his mum and his ailing grandparents as well as new friendships. Time passes, Fánek grows up, and after his father’s unexpected return they bond with each other through a boat trip on a lake and the resurfacing of a treasured memory. Although the story is set in an unspecified time and place, it has a relevant message for contemporary readers. The Czech-Belarusian artist Margarita Khavanski has made use of various drawing techniques, and her illustrations with their soft-focus appearance and attention to detail resonate with Jana Šrámková’s unique, linguistically rich text.

Technology can be overwhelming with its “I need it yesterday” mindset, but the special complicity between grandads and grandsons has been with us since time immemorial. And it’s all the more indispensable in an era of harassed parents flitting between them.

The Wednesday-afternoon outings of a grandfather, Karel Kroupa, and his eight-year-old grandson with the same name previously delighted visitors to the 2020 Bologna Book Fair in It’s the Underground, Man!, with their witty dialogue and pleasingly minimalist design by Jan Šrámek and Veronika Vlková. Now their adventures continue in this exploration of the surface of Prague. The smartphone the grandfather hasn’t yet mastered, which Karel’s mother has made a prerequisite for the duo’s dream trip to visit the London underground, becomes an excuse to test the hypothesis that every technological advance had to start somewhere – even the analogue ones. And so the grey-haired adventurer and his young protégé visit flea markets, brownfields and other corners of the city where these obsolete appliances can be unearthed. Along the way, they help each other out, because no-one is born wise, mobile apps won’t always save us, and “common sense” and other “old-school” concepts don’t belong on the scrap heap. The refreshing humour and deliberate use of repetition in the story reinforce the common ground between the childhood and old age of the two Karel Kroupas. Milada Rezková’s empathetic approach breaks down the nonsensical modern-day divide between Boomers and Zoomers and demonstrates the cultivation of the male principle within the family, which is so vital for a child’s discovery of the world.

Age 7+

Read an excerpt from the book here.

Štěpánka Jislová’s autobiographical graphic novel looks at the toxicity of some modern relationships and sexual violence. It does so with courage, determination and a real flair for the language of comics.

Growing up on a housing estate in the post-Velvet Revolution years of the 1990s – sexual violence, anxiety around love, toxicity in relationships, and casual sex as both a placebo and a refuge. The intimate personal themes which Štěpánka Jislová broaches and then examines in detail in her autobiographical graphic novel Heartcore have been largely absent from Czech comics up till now. Ambitious, original and inventive in its use of a variety of techniques, this book by one of the most distinctive Czech comics writers of the past decade still comes across as very authentic and lived and will have no trouble standing up to the global competition.

This unapologetically frank story about the painful search for oneself in solitude and in relationships and about first-hand experience of sexual abuse is presented with humour and objectivity. At the same time, it combines artistically elegant stylization with unvarnished honesty in its depiction in order to communicate something that is otherwise virtually impossible to convey. Part generational testimony, part analytical (self)disclosure, with an element of indictment and at least a hint of manifesto, it all adds up to an exceptional graphic novel about what it was like to be a young woman not so long ago and what it is like today, and about the complex and sometimes almost unbearably confusing and traumatic world of modern partnerships and intimate relationships.

This extremely readable international drama recounts true historical events without resorting to the usual clichés of comics biographies, and offers an exciting story with masterful narration and unusual drawings.

The story of Nicholas Winton, who saved 669 children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, is well known – at least in its outlines – and is usually presented in terms of his heroism and admiration at what he achieved. Tereza Verecká’s story in no way seeks to undermine Winton’s heroism, but she presents it without pathos, and most importantly, she shines light on the diverse background of those who helped him and who normally remain in the shadow of “the legend of Winton the rescuer”. Based on his memoirs, his story is then compared with the perspective of Doreen Warriner, which reveals that behind every great man is a woman (though not nearly as famous despite being hugely influential). The reader will probably need some time to get used to Podprocký’s drawing style in relation to the theme of the comic book, but it is well worth it as it is sophisticated, dynamic, and makes great use of strong visual metaphors as well as subtle expressions and symbols. Although the graphic novel takes a serious look at a profound and difficult subject, humorous moments and ironic hyperbole also organically blend in.

The comic won the Muriel Award 2024 in the categories Best Comic Book, Best Art and Best Script.

Read an excerpt from the book here.

A detective/romance novel centring around a melting glacier in Greenland.

Although the story begins with an encounter between a mysterious girl in black – a microbiologist called Klára – and a young journalist called Rosli – a man prone to drink – in the Prague Botanical Garden in Trója, the main character of this novel is a Greenlandic glacier. When a new greenhouse is opened, by chance the young journalist finds out that this is the result of embezzlement. The reader is introduced to a flighty musician called Valdemar, a thriller-writer named Nina and other curious individuals. In a remarkable story arc, the two main protagonists, who already have a romantic connection, find themselves on a scientific expedition in Greenland – a glacier is melting and who knows what is concealed within its depths. But what the pseudonym A. Gravensteen conceals is a first-time novelist whose romance-cum-detective novel with its sophisticated parallel construction, self-mocking narrator, varied narrative world and rich use of language was being hotly tipped even before it came out.

Praise:

“One of the most remarkable Czech novels of recent years.”

—Petr A. Bílek, literary historian and theorist

“Even re-reading it was an exceptional experience, thanks in part to the linguistic skills of A. Gravensteen, but mainly because the author has created a vivid fictional world that the reader is reluctant to leave, an impression which is reinforced by the book’s ending.”

—iLiteratura

About the author:

A. Gravensteen is the name on an apartment door. Who wrote this novel behind it remains a mystery.

A collection of refreshing, playful and gently ironic lyric poems which combine a wry smile at the absurdity of life with melancholic meditations on human fate, desires and the evanescence of dreams.

The collection Old Pop creatively develops the legacy of postmodern poetry, though without the need for radical gestures aimed at dismantling the canonical texts and the so-called great narratives. It “merely” reveals the mechanisms of a “great narrative” of literature, which has not always been great in the sense of admirable. That is why the poet makes it clear that he doesn’t take poetry deadly seriously, but rather views it much more as a game – an enjoyable play on words, ideas, images, fragments of literary traditions and allusions to historical styles.

In this collection, poetry appears to be a message from the old world, though it does not invite us to escape from the modern world, but rather seeks to enrich and enliven the world we inhabit through a liberating use of the imagination and musing over the patina of archaic words. The distinctive atmosphere of the collection is also due to the poet’s ability to sketch out a fragment of a story within a concise piece of text which has the potential to be expanded into a short story or even a novel. The fates of the bizarre characters created by Ohnisko in this way are, however, only roughly outlined, leaving the reader to flesh them out using their own imagination.

A slender book with two beginnings, offering a dual variation of the same story, which refers to the cycle of life. The dominant illustrations and restrained use of text convey a message for readers of any age.

This charming little book is full of surprises: it has the unusually small format of a pocket diary, and the reader soon finds that it is a double book: the story can be read from both ends, which meet in the middle on a folded, double-sided page with a panoramic illustration. One part of the story tells the tale of an elderberry seed that dropped from the beak of a white fledgling bird, while the other part depicts the adventures of the bird itself. The narrative gently portrays the passage of time and the cycle of life, encourages readers to be observant, and highlights the role of random chance in our world. The text is brief: no more than four lines of simple sentences in capital letters are concentrated on the lower half of the page. The book is characterised by a stylistic purity, which is emphasised by the composition, colour and technique of Klára Zahrádková’s illustrations. The images cleverly underpin the story’s details; readers big and small will love coming back to this book again and again.

Age: 7+

An emotionally rich story of a contemporary ten-year-old girl: about adventure, a conscious bond with nature and a family affected by illness.

Mojenka is a ten-year-old schoolgirl and single child, growing up near Prague. Above all she loves nature – not just the garden and forest surrounding the home where she lives with her parents – but she also has a fondness for exotic humpback whales and dolphins. Her love for animals was instilled in her by her mother, a naturalist who lectures at university, and who taught Mojenka from a young age to recognize and protect nature, and to be courageous and self-sufficient too. Mojenka makes good use of all of these characteristics when one autumn day her mother has to go for an operation and since then has been fighting cancer. The poet and writer Olga Stehlíková looks at this sensitive topic with incredible empathy – thanks to the character of the father there is still some humour and the girl’s knowledge is used for gentle, illustrated explanations (the mother’s illness is compared to galls on the leaves of trees). The narrative switches between a description of the moments shared with her mother and Mojenka’s adventurous trips to the forest, the breeding kennels and school. With their breadth of motifs, Andrea Tachezy’s fragile, dreamlike illustrations highlight the turbulent world of an adolescent girl.

Age 11+