Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Jáchym Topol
City, Sister, Silver
. Dissident writer and lyricist for Czech rock band Psí vo-
jáci,Topol'sfirstnoveltobetranslatedintoEnglishisaninventivetakeonthealienationand
disappointment experienced by the younger generation after the Velvet Revolution.
LudvíkVaculík
The Guinea Pigs
.ThiscataloguestheslowdehumanizationofCzechsociety
in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion.
The Axe
centres on the cultural upheaval of the
mid-1960s. Vaculík himself was expelled from the Party during the 1968 Prague Spring and
went on to sign Charter 77.
Jiří Weil
Life With a Star; Mendelssohn is on the Roof
. Two novels written just after the
war and based on Weil's experiences as a Czech Jew in hiding during the Nazi occupation of
Prague.
PaulWilson(ed.)
Prague: A Traveler's Literary Companion
.Agreatselectionofshortstor-
ies and snippets on Prague from, among others, Meyrink, Kisch and Čapek, plus contempor-
ary writers such as Jáchym Topol.
POETRY
PetrBorkovec
From the Interior - Poems 1995-2005
.Bornin1970,Borkovecwritespoetry
that is not political, but personal and lyrical. Translated by Justin Quinn in a dual text, it
makes for very accessible reading.
Sylva Fischerová
The Tremor of Racehorses: Selected Poems
. Poet and novelist Fischerová
in many ways continues in the Holub tradition. Her poems are by turns powerful, obtuse and
personal, and were written in exile in Switzerland and Germany after she fled in 1968.
Josef Hanzlík
Selected Poems
. Refreshingly accessible collection of poems written over the
latter half of the 20th century by a poet of Havel's generation.
MiroslavHolub
Holubisascientist andscholar,andhispoetryreflects thisuniquefusionof
master poet and chief immunologist. Regularly banned in his own country, he was the Czech
poetparexcellence-classicallytrained,erudite,liberalandwestward-leaning.Thefullrange
of his work, including some previously unpublished poems, is published in
Intensive Care:
Selected and New Poems
.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Selected Poetry
. Rilke's upbringing was unexceptional, except that his
motherbroughthimupasagirluntiltheageof6.Inhisadultlife,hebecameoneofPrague's
leadingauthorsoftheinterwarperiodandsubsequentlyprobablythebest-knownpoetoutside
Czechoslovakia.
Marcela Rydlová-Herlich (ed.)
Treasury of Czech Love Poems
. A good way to get a taste
of a variety of Czech poetry from more than 33 poets, most of whom are twentieth century.
JaroslavSeifert
The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert
.TheonlyCzechwritertowintheNobelPrize
for Literature, Seifert was a founder-member of the Communist Party and the avant-garde
arts movement Devětsil, later falling from grace and signing the Charter in his old age. His
