Central European modern history is notable for many political and cultural discontinuities and often violent changes as well as many attempts to preserve and (re)invent traditional cultural identities. This series cultivates contemporary translations of influential literary works into English (and other languages) which have not been available to global readership due to censorship, the effects of Cold War or repetitive political disruptions in Czech publishing and its international ties. Readers in English both in today’s cosmopolitan Prague or anywhere in the physical and electronic world can thus become acquainted with works which capture the Central European historical experience and which express and also have helped to form Czech and Central European nature, humour and imagination. Believing that any literary canon can be defined only in dialogue with other cultures, the series will bring proven classics used in Western university courses as well as (re)discoveries aiming to provide new perspectives in intermedial areal studies of literature, history and culture. All titles are accompanied by an afterword, the translations are reviewed and circulated in the scholarly community before publication which has been reflected by nominations for several literary awards.
Beyond the World of Men

Beyond the World of Men

Chew, Geoffrey (ed.)

This collection opens a window into the largely unknown world of Czech women’s writing in the fin de siècle. With stories of women compel...

Women’s Fiction at the Czech Fin de Siècle

published: february 2024
recommended price: 390 czk

e-shop

Transfigured Night

Transfigured Night

Moníková, Libuše

Leonora Marty, who fled Czechoslovakia decades earlier, has returned after the Velvet Revolution. Having concluded her ballet of The Makr...

published: may 2023
recommended price: 260 czk

e-shop

Ear

Ear

Procházka, Jan

A paranoid thriller of life under surveillance in Communist Czechoslovakia. A deputy minister in the Communist Party, Ludvík enjoys all t...

published: july 2022
recommended price: 280 czk

e-shop

The Lesser Histories

The Lesser Histories

Zábrana, Jan

From the eighth floor of a tower block in Central Europe, Jan Zábrana surveyed the twentieth century. He had been exiled from his own lif...

published: june 2022
recommended price: 340 czk

e-shop

Rusalka

Rusalka

Kvapil, Jaroslav

Famous as the libretto for Antonín Dvorák’s opera of the same name, Jaroslav Kvapil’s poem Rusalka is an intriguing work of literature on...

A Lyrical Fairy Tale in Three Acts

published: october 2020
recommended price: 280 czk

e-shop

Writing Underground

Writing Underground

Machovec, Martin

In this collection of writings produced between 2000 and 2018, the pioneering literary historian of the Czech underground, Martin Machove...

Reflections on Samizdat Literature in Totalitarian Czechoslovakia

published: december 2019
recommended price: 290 czk

e-shop

Why I Write?

Why I Write?

Hrabal, Bohumil

This collection of the earliest prose by one of literature’s greatest stylists captures, as scholar Arnault Maréchal put it, “the moment ...

And Other Early Prose Pieces

published: november 2019
recommended price: 490 czk

e-shop