Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
sweet short stories of life in the 1970s and '80s, such as
My First Loves
and
My Merry
Mornings
.
There's no shortage of new Czech literary talent. Names such as Jáchym Topol (b
1962), Petra Hůlová (b 1979), Michal Viewegh (b 1962), Michal Ajvaz (b 1949),
Emil Hakl (b 1958), Miloš Urban (b 1967) and Petra Soukupová (1982) are taking
their places among the country's leading authors. They are pushing out old-guard fig-
ures such as Kundera and Klíma, who are now seen as chroniclers of a very different
age.
The 2002 best seller
Prague
by American writer Arthur Phillips is not actu-
ally set in Prague, but in Budapest in the 1990s. Phillips apparently chose
the title to reflect the envy his expat characters felt for their countrymen
hanging out and partying at the time in the Czech capital.
Until relatively recently, few books from these younger novelists had been trans-
lated into English. That's changing, though, and publishers such as Portobello Books
and Peter Owen in the UK and Northwestern University Press in the USA have shown
a recent willingness to take a chance on new Czech fiction. Let's hope the trend con-
tinues.
Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert (1901-86) won the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1984, though Seifert is not universally considered by Czechs to be their
best poet. That distinction often belongs to poet-scientist Miroslav Holub
(1923-98).
And Then There's Franz Kafka
No discussion of Czech literature would be complete without mentioning Franz Kafka
(1883-1924), easily the best-known writer to have ever lived in Prague and the author
of the modern classics
The Trial
and
The Castle
, among many others. Though Kafka
was German-speaking and Jewish, he's as thoroughly connected to the city as any
Czech writer could be. Kafka's birthplace is just a stone's throw from the Old Town
Square and the author rarely strayed more than a couple of hundred metres in any dir-
ection during the course of his short life.
