Czech Books | All stories

If you live in the United States or many parts of Western Europe, you will almost certainly have come across e-books. Downloading books electronically has become a major part of the business of publishing and selling books, and e-book readers like Amazon’s “Kindle” are selling in their millions. But how does the situation compare in the Czech Republic? David Vaughan finds out more in this week’s Czech Books.

It is quite likely that you will never have heard of the Czech teacher, religious thinker, pacifist and humanist, Přemysl Pitter, but he deserves to be remembered as one of the great Czechs of the 20th century. Pitter touched the lives of thousands, and his work helping children during and just after the Second World War, matches the extraordinary achievements Oskar Schindler. In a new biography of Přemysl Pitter, the writer and journalist Pavel Kosatík puts his extraordinary life in context. We find out more in Czech Books with David Vaughan.

Why did the communists ban comics? Why is it so hard to translate the 19th century English novel into Czech? And what does this have to do with a 17th century battle in Prague? We find some of the answers in this week’s Czech Books, with David Vaughan.

Last month the Czech Republic enjoyed its annual celebration of poetry, the “Den poezie”. Literally this translates as “poetry day”, although in reality the event lasts a good deal longer than a mere 24 hours. This year there was a particular reason to celebrate, as David Vaughan reports in Czech Books.

Radio Prague’s literary connections go back over seventy years, starting even before the Second World War. Well known writers like Arnošt Lustig, Lenka Reinerová or Benjamin Kuras have all at one time worked here. And the tradition continues. Pavla Horáková, known to many Radio Prague listeners as the voice of our letters programme Mailbox, has just had a novel for children published with glowing reviews. She is David Vaughan’s guest in this week’s Czech Books.

This month we are celebrating a major Czech literary anniversary. Two hundred years ago the great Czech romantic poet, Karel Hynek Mácha, was born in Prague. To mark the anniversary a new English edition of his most famous poem “Máj” (May) has been published and in this week’s Czech Books, David Vaughan talks to the translator, Marcela Sulak.

Czechoslovakia was one of the first victims of the Nazis, with the march into the Sudetenland in I938 followed by the occupation of the rest of the country in March 1939 and an increasingly oppressive regime for most of the population. The backlash at the end of WWII was harsh and violent. And that backlash against the Nazi occupiers, Sudeten Germans and Czechs believed to have collaborated in some way is the subject of US historian Benjamin Frommer’s book “National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia.”

One of the most prominent guests at the Forum 2000 conference in Prague earlier this month was the conservative English philosopher and writer Roger Scruton. In the Czech Republic he is well known not just for his extensive writings on the history of modern philosophy, but also for close links he forged with Czechoslovakia in the years before the fall of communism. In this week’s Czech Books, Roger Scruton talks to David Vaughan about how his special relationship to this country has developed over the years.

In the summer of the 2002, Prague was hit by one of the worst floods in the city’s history. The swollen Vltava inundated parts of the historic centre, including the Jewish quarter, which had to be evacuated. This dramatic scene is the setting for the new Czech novel Sidra Noach by David Jan Novotný. The name comes from the weekly readings from the scripture. As it happened, the story of Noah was read in the synagogue just as the waters began to recede.

It is not often that we are given a taste of contemporary Czech poetry in really good English translation. A remarkable exception is a new collection of poems by one of the best Czech poets to emerge in the last twenty-five years, Sylva Fischerová. She translated the poems herself, together with the American poet, academic and translator, Stuart Friebert, and the result, published under the title, “The Swing in the Middle of Chaos”, shows just how fruitful such collaborations can be. David Vaughan met Sylva Fischerová in her book-filled office