A dystopian page-turner about the coming of age of a young hero, which won the 2017 EU Prize for Literature.

A fishing village at the end of the world. A lake that is drying up and, ominously, pushing out its banks. The men have vodka, the women troubles, the children eczema to scratch at. Born into this unforgiving environment, Nami, a young boy, embarks on a journey with nothing but a bundle of nerves, a coat that was once his grandfather’s and the vague idea of searching for his mother, who disappeared from his life at a young age. To uncover the greatest mystery of his life, he must sail across and walk around the lake and finally sink to its bottom.

This novel is a raw account of life in a devastated land and the harsh, primitive circumstances under which people fight to survive. Nami’s story touches on various contemporary societal and political issues from life in post-soviet Europe to ecology, but they never take the spotlight away from the powerful central narrative. The tension between the novel’s uncertain setting, both in time and space, and its naturalistic realism transforms one boy’s coming of age into an often-disconcerting modern myth.

]]> https://www.czechlit.cz/en/book/jezero-en/feed/ 0 https://www.czechlit.cz/en/book/mojenka-en/ https://www.czechlit.cz/en/book/mojenka-en/#comments Mon, 20 Mar 2023 17:46:21 +0000 CzechLit https://www.czechlit.cz/book/ ...animals was instilled in her by her mother, a naturalist who lectures at university, and who taught Mojenka from a young age to recognize... ]]>

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+

An interdisciplinary overview of the hair that covers our heads and bodies in terms of its social, aesthetic and cultural significance.

Hair – not just as a “crowning glory,” but rather as a social signal and cultural phenomenon. Our hair sends messages about our gender, sexual maturity, age, social status and world view. This interdisciplinary study of the styling of hair and beards and the wearing of wigs examines their significance in a biological, historical and cultural context. It draws on literary, archaeological, anthropological, scientific and visual sources to look at global cultures from the pre-literary age, through ancient times and the modern era, to the present.

Family memoir literature—a sensitive remembrance of the Shoah and the heroism of ordinary people, intended for the youngest readers, the generation of great-grandchildren.

The true war-time story of Eva Hermannová is told from the perspective of the stuffed toy rabbit that the heroine got for her fourth birthday. The little girl grew up in a harmonious family, her father was the co-owner of a department store in Opava and her mother was an Austrian opera singer, before darkness began to fall over her childhood and adolescence—she was transported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp as a mischling in 1943. The author recounts her heartbreaking time in Theresienstadt with deep comprehension and sensitivity towards child readers. She also focuses on the world-famous production of the opera Brundibár, which the children staged in the camp’s oppressive conditions. Evička, known as Eva as she grew older, returned home at the age of sixteen, and as an adult became the artistic director of opera at Prague’s National Theatre, and had a family of her own. Linda Marková’s illustrations fittingly alternate cheerful and darker tones, documenting the narrative by Klára Dvořáková, one of the central heroine’s grandchildren. The author was also involved in publishing her grandmother’s memoirs, which came out in 2020 with the title The Last Herrmann Girl – The Road to Theresienstadt (Poslední Herrmannovic holka. Cesta do Terezína) aimed at adult readers.

Age: 7+

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.

This pictorial and textual meditation on the meaning of time is based on the Einsteinian principle that our perception of time is relative. And yet each of us is faced with the challenge of making sense of it.

Subtitled By the Time You’ve Read This Sentence, 21 Children will Have Come into the World, this lavish paperback is not merely an encyclopaedia of data about the quantity which mysteriously gives everything on Earth a fourth dimension, including memory and the stamp of impermanence. There is astonishing ingenuity behind David Böhm’s conceptual approach to the illustrated reference book, which he has already successfully employed in his previous books exploring the functioning of the head, modern urban planning and the role of Antarctica in our planet’s ecosystem.

In Now Böhm introduces older school-age readers to the variable length of time and its influence on our inner selves, poses philosophical questions about its purpose and also teaches us to allow ourselves moments of meaningful boredom within that relativity, while time continues to flow steadily on, driven by laws it is not necessary – or perhaps even advisable – for us to know about. The pace at which the book examines its subject is no less dynamic. Fun facts in the style of Dorling Kindersley alternate with collages and comic strips; a section in the form of a diary is followed by a striking visual call to action – in part an ecological one, so that we will still have something to measure with our timepieces in the future.
Age 9+

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+

This Bologna Ragazzi Award-winning “manual of urbanism for beginners” uses images of a giant paper model of a city to show young adults how to view our cities critically and how to develop an intense relationship with our immediate surroundings.

The art of urban planning and facilitating the coexistence of city-dwellers is not an example of “social engineering” but rather a reflection of the age-old attempt to create a functioning polis. Today – when this type of settlement has come to dominate the globe – urban conservation in Central and Eastern Europe faces challenges from the historical burden of communist architecture, but also from contemporary vested interests and short-sighted attempts to patch things up. However, the place we live in deserves a better deal. Together with two award-winning artists, architect Osamu Okamura discusses possible cures for neuralgic points in our human anthills in a clear, understandable and considered manner. Thanks to “learning through play” in the form of dozens of visual jokes, he puts the problem into the necessary context – after all, if cities are to avoid degenerating into backdrops for dystopian science fiction, a consensual approach is needed.

Age 12+

About the authors:

Osamu Okamura (1973) is an architect, dean and lecturer at the Faculty of Art and Architecture of the Technical University in Liberec, chair of the Prague City Council Commission for Art in the Public Space, and a member of the Commission for the Development of Town Planning, Architecture and the Public Space of Prague 7 City Council Authority. As a member of the board of the Czech Architecture Foundation and with support from a Fulbright-Masaryk scholarship, he spent time in 2018 studying at the Chicago Architecture Center, where among other things he focused on programmes for children and young adults.

David Böhm (1982) is an artist and author of illustrated children’s books. His collection of comic-strip tales from Africa, Ticho hrocha (The Silence of the Hippo, 2009) won 2nd place in the competition for the Most Beautiful Czech Books of the Year. He also had success with the publication Hlava v hlavě (The Head in the Head, 2013): an encyclopaedic fount of knowledge with imaginative artistic and technical explanations of the functioning of the head perched on our necks (Most Beautiful Czech Books of the Year, 2014 Magnesia Litera Award, with the poet Ondřej Buddeus). He is the author of A jako Antarktida (A is for Antarctica, 2019), which won, among others, the 2020 German Children’s Literature Award in the non-fiction category.

Jiří Franta (1978) has been drawing and painting his whole life. His main interest is drawing but he also often creates installations, sculpture and videos. He is a member of the Rafani group, part of the artistic duo Franta–Böhm, and co-founder of the comics magazine KIX. He has exhibited in the Czech Republic and abroad, and has been a finalist on several occasions at the prestigious Jindřich Chalupecký Award.

A truly interactive book, allowing readers to “generate” their own story all by themselves from the components provided.

Storyworks, from the creators of the popular children’s magazine Raketa, enables children to create their own story from the 12 million possible combinations of figures, objects and situations that can be drawn out of the “story generator.” The aim is to develop children’s imagination and creative potential while pushing the boundaries of fantasy. At the same time, it helps to develop the reader’s literacy. Sixty games and tasks are divided into four levels according to the ability and age of the reader/creator. Each level has been illustrated by a different illustrator. The book can also be used creatively by writing, drawing and pasting things onto it.

Age 6+

Read an excerpt from the book here.

An image of old age as a power struggle.

With her second novel, Bodies, the author and screenwriter Klára Vlasáková has again drawn a strong response from readers and critics, confirming her position as a talented writer who focuses on contemporary issues. Once more, she gives a voice to those who, for various reasons, find themselves on the margins of society – this time, older women. Marie, a submissive woman in her sixties, earns some extra money babysitting and caring for the infirm in order to support her grown-up daughter, who belittles and financially exploits her. Vlasáková vividly demonstrates that it is not just one complicated mother–daughter relationship which is to blame here, but the wider social context in which older women become invisible. The worship of youth and the reinterpretation of the lives of previous generations has led to us losing the notion that age equals wisdom. Moreover, in connection with the second sex, there is hardly an abundance of capital that can be used to buy off time for a while. Vlasáková has the ability to spot revealing contrasts in things and weave her essayistic/journalistic style into a powerful story of the maternal bond and the vulnerability of bodies – something that unites all of us in spite of our differences.