A nostalgic, wistful collection about life, love and the city of Brno.

Martin Stöhr is a prominent Czech poet and his new book would appear to have been written for people of his generation, for his family, for Brno, but primarily for himself. These are beautiful memoranda, images from times slipping into the past, when “the old world silently falls”, from childhood, youth and approaching old age, which he observes and portrays anew in coloured ink – no reason to despair, instead there is room for uncovering gold in the form of securing a simple love for a complex city. The colour emerges from the linguistic wealth, from the variety of the palette from which it is drawn, the subtle feeling for an image, clean cuts, a strongly evoked atmosphere and its sharp fractures. The book is imbued with a strange wistful quality, a nostalgia when observing the change and permanence of a city and our former selves, the feeling of futility and uselessness at any attempts at art, but which is indispensable nevertheless.

]]> https://www.czechlit.cz/en/book/uzita-lyrika-en/feed/ 0 https://www.czechlit.cz/en/book/jezovita-balbinus-en/ https://www.czechlit.cz/en/book/jezovita-balbinus-en/#comments Tue, 20 Feb 2024 11:19:29 +0000 CzechLit https://www.czechlit.cz/book/ A novel about the life of the scholar, man of letters, priest and educator Bohuslav Balbín (1621–1688). Stanislav Komárek chose an unusual... ]]>

A novel about the life of the scholar, man of letters, priest and educator Bohuslav Balbín (1621–1688).

Stanislav Komárek chose an unusual subject for his fourth novel: Bohuslav Balbín. This versatile Baroque intellectual, historian and hagiographer, teacher and writer, who was a defender and promoter of the Czech language long before the National Revival of the 18th and 19th centuries, has quite a lot in common with Komárek. This is probably the first reason why the author’s latest work of prose is so successful: Komárek has a genuine fondness for his character and considers Balbín his partner. And so the period following the Battle of White Mountain, often referred to as an age of darkness, is suddenly an age of light. An era when things were happening; when people were suffering from terrible poverty and the pain and destruction of war but at the same time great strides were being made in language, education, culture and history. And since Komárek is writing a work of fiction, he creatively develops a number of motifs in his own way: Balbín the forerunner of the Scout movement, Balbín the rambler, Balbín the practitioner of homoeroticism. And always with narrative gusto and verve, always with a flair for comical language and situations, with an inventive metaphor at virtually every turn. This is the second reason why his novel works so well. And the third reason is the author’s natural ability to span borders or bring together different threads, whether in terms of geography (from exile in Austria to years spent wandering the globe), disciplines (from Darwin to Jung) or genres (a writer of lyric poetry, epic poetry and drama in one). With all of this under one roof, the Jesuit Balbinus, who has been dead for more than four hundred years, suddenly comes alive.

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.

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.

Japanologist Anna Cima’s debut novel is a contender for Czech literary discovery of the year.

A teenager called Jana finds herself in the lively Tokyo district of Shibuya. Her slightly older alter ego is studying Japanese language and culture in Prague, attempting to translate and trying to get a scholarship in Japan. The life story of the author whose work Jana is translating with a friend – the forgotten prose writer Kawashita – works its way into the mind and fate of both versions of Jana. This prose debut by the young Japanologist, with its readable and refreshingly colloquial yet in no way trivial language, looks at ways of absorbing and understanding different cultures as well as the contradiction inherent in a dream come true and presents Japan and its culture in an erudite but far from dull way.

A literary journey across the railways of Europe.

The author, who has been fascinated by the world of railways since he was a child, intersperses his absorbing historical account with fascinating tales from his many travels – from Palermo in Sicily to Lapland in Finland, on the overnight train from Kyiv to Lviv or on the local train from Česky Ráj to Jedlová. He travels through Germany, Switzerland and Austria, crossing the Alps to Trieste and Venice in Italy. Never again will you mind missing a train, as another one will always come along. You’ll swap the fastest routes for slower, more scenic ones, learn to appreciate the beauty of railway cathedrals, understand the “song” of the locomotives and discover why a railway goddess watches over our destinies. This personal and poetic guide for all train lovers was first published in German by Piper Verlag.

Malinka is a novel about the struggles of childhood and parenthood, loosely connected with Běsa.

Malinka is a pacy story that shows a crisis of human identity with uncompromising urgency; it reflects on the essence of this crisis and considers its justification. Although born on a maternity ward, officially Malinka is a foundling. She is adopted by Ina and Jaromír, who also have two biological sons; the phrase ‘not known’ appears several times in her birth certificate. Ina understands how Malinka’s complicated background is a cause of suffering to her. She wants to stand by her daughter, but often this simply doesn’t work out. Malinka is twenty-two when something unexpected happens that forces her to fill some blanks in her life and address the question of what makes a mother. Forty-year-old Alice has no need to reflect on this – clearly, she knows the answer intuitively – yet the complexities of motherhood present her with an unexpected challenge. The father of the child that links these two women is Alice’s husband Roman, who longs for a child.

Can a woman wake up one day and say #MeToo twenty years later?

Entering her fifties, Sylvie Novak looks back on her successful career as a partisan writer and reflects on her complicated personal life. She revisits memories of an initiatory relationship with an older writer, reevaluating what happened long ago. And then there is the present: touring with her new book of feminist essays, dealing with the signs of ageing, and fighting the Invisible Woman Syndrome, all of which Sylvie does in her own way. But on top of everything, Sylvie’s daughter Judita, has no scruples about standing up to her mother, and eventually plays the ultimate card against her.

Against a backdrop of stereotypes, generational clashes, and various forms of social activism, the reader becomes a spectator of a struggle.

What good is a magic porridge pot in this day and age?

Víťa has a clear idea: he will use his magic porridge pot to become a superhero and fight crime as Porridgeman! However, the sleepy Czech village he lives in is all out of crime, and he and his two friends begin to despair. There might be more to the village than it seems, though. A secret has been lurking beneath the surface for years – one that surpasses all ordinary crime. For children and adults alike, this new graphic novel by Kateřina Čupová attractively combines seemingly incompatible genres: traditional storytelling is enhanced by superhero motifs, rural satire and Japanese influence. This book is a feast for readers, whether they like porridge or not.

Read an excerpt from the book here.

A story set in Taiwan about the search for truth and one’s place in history.

A Taiwanese man called Bao strives to keep a firm hold over every aspect of his life. He has a wonderful career, children at prestigious schools, and he doesn’t even seem to be troubled by his dysfunctional relationship with his ex-wife, Sedrika. In Taiwan the main thing is not to lose face – no matter what. However, all that suddenly changes when Sedrika falls ill with an incurable disease and their son, David, decides to meet his uncle Tae, who Bao has apparently fallen out with over an inheritance. From that moment on, the layers of unspoken family grievances and lies gradually begin to peel away, fundamentally altering the lives of all those around Bao. Nothing is as it seems and nothing turns out the way the protagonists in the novel would have wanted. In the character of Bao and the story of his family, we see a reflection of the fate of a sorely tried country and ancestral traumas reaching far back into the past. The novel Black Tongues shows the fragility of our ideas about values such as truth, duty, honour and love, as well as how difficult it is to express ourselves outwardly in a genuine and honest manner.

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