Series

Modern Czech Classics(45)

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.
by date by title by author
The Cremator (paperback)

The Cremator (paperback)

Fuks, Ladislav

“The devil’s neatest trick is to persuade us that he doesn’t exist.” It is a maxim that both rings true in our contemporary world and per...

published: february 2018
recommended price: 200 czk

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Views from the Inside

Views from the Inside

Machovec, Martin (ed.)

From political novels to surrealist poetry and censored rock and roll, Czech underground culture of the latter twentieth century displaye...

Czech Underground Literature and Culture (1948–1989)

published: april 2018
recommended price: 260 czk

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The Pied Piper

The Pied Piper

Dyk, Viktor

For The Pied Piper, Czech writer Viktor Dyk found his muse in the much retold medieval Saxon legend of the villainous, pipe-playing rat-c...

published: april 2018
recommended price: 280 czk

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The Shop on Main Street

The Shop on Main Street

Grosman, Ladislav

A classical work of the 1960s Czechoslovak literature and film in a new publication of Iris Urwin Lewit’s translation. An original and re...

published: august 2019
recommended price: 280 czk

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A Czech Dreambook

A Czech Dreambook

Vaculík, Ludvík

It’s 1979 in Czechoslovakia, ten years into the crushing restoration of repressive communism known as normalization, and Ludvík Vaculík h...

published: october 2019
recommended price: 540 czk

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Bohumil Hrabal

Bohumil Hrabal

Pelán, Jiří

Described as “one of the great prose stylists of the twentieth century,” Bohumil Hrabal ranks among the most important and widely transla...

A Full-length Portrait

published: october 2019
recommended price: 260 czk

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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

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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

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Rusalka

Rusalka

Kvapil, Jaroslav

Famous as the libretto for Antonín Dvořák’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

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