Czech Books | All stories

Last month was the end of an era in Czech poetry. The man who practically embodied the poetic underground of the 1970s and 80s, Ivan Martin Jirous – alias Magor, or Loony in English – died at the age of 67. Not only was Magor one of best Czech poets of his generation, but also the driving force behind the underground rock scene. He embodied the longing for rebellion and freedom, as so-called “normalization” sucked the air out of Czech and Slovak society. In Czech Books, David Vaughan talks to one of Magor’s close friends and associates.

In this programme we go south of the border, to explore some intriguing Czech literary and other cultural links with Mexico, stretching right back to the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Bernie Higgins begins by recounting an extraordinary episode from the mid 19th century.

Last month we heard the sad news of the death of Ewald Osers at his home in England at the age of 94. Born in Prague at a time when it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Osers was an outstanding linguist and a brilliant translator. Over the decades he translated dozens of Czech writers and poets into English, and was equally well known for his translations from German. David Vaughan looks back at a fascinating life.

A few days ago the Booker Prize winning Irish writer John Banville was in Prague, to receive one of Europe’s most coveted literary awards, the Franz Kafka Prize. David Vaughan took the opportunity to talk to the writer about his work and his fascination with the cultural and literary world of Central Europe.

The best-selling American writer Robert Fulghum has such an enthusiastic following in the Czech Republic that he has published several of his books here in Czech translation before they have even appeared at home. That includes his latest book, “If You Love Me Still, Will You Love Me Moving?” Its subtitle “Tales from the Century Ballroom” hints at its theme – that most passionate of ballroom dances, tango. Last week Robert Fulghum was in Prague to promote the book, and found time to pay a visit to the radio. David Vaughan met him.

This year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore has a special significance for Czechs, as we find out in this week’s Czech Books.

This week would have been the 98th birthday of Edith Pargeter, an English writer who translated many of the Czech classics. You may well have come across her under the penname Ellis Peters that she adopted for much of her fiction. Under this alias she created two of the most famous fictional detectives in twentieth century crime writing, Sergeant George Felse, and the medieval monastic sleuth Brother Cadfael. In Czech Books this week, David Vaughan explores Edith Pargeter’s special relationship to Czechoslovakia.

In Czech Books this week we find out about the life and times of an English-born Renaissance poet who spent nearly all her life in Prague and in her time was more celebrated than Shakespeare. David Vaughan has been exploring the life and work of “Westonia”.

We have reached the ninth and final part of our serialized reading of “If I had been a boy, I would have been shot…” by Jaroslava Skleničková. The war is over, and Jaroslava’s account takes us from the traumas of her return to the present day, and her life with her husband Mirek in the new Lidice. But first, David Vaughan sums up the story so far.

In the last few weeks Veronika Hyks has been reading from the memoirs of Jaroslava Skleničková, an extraordinary story of survival in war. We have now reached May 1945. After nearly three years in Ravensbrück, the women of Lidice are now free, although they still face the trauma of returning home to find that the village has been wiped off the map and that all their menfolk and nearly all their children are dead. David Vaughan introduces the eighth episode.