2024-10-05 12:27:53
It is important that the book market remains diverse. If there were only a few large publishing houses, it would lead to publishing only mainstream literature, says writer Markéta Hejkalová, who is also the director of the Autumn Book Fair in Havlíčková Brod. Its 34th year will take place on October 11 and 12 in the Ostrov Cultural Center and the Vysočina Regional Library.
For the first time, the publishing house O.Leandr from Štoků in Havlíčkobrodsk, founded in 2022, will be represented at the Autumn Book Fair. It focuses on translating and publishing literature from the Balkans. “It makes me happy when new publishing houses appear. I look up to them with admiration and sometimes even pity,” notes Markéta Hejkalová.
According to her, small publishing houses guarantee diversity to readers by bringing literature from languages that are not normally translated.
New this year will be a city literary festival called Knižní Havlíčkův Brod. The idea is to give more space to writers in the accompanying program. They will be able to present their latest works, while visitors can expect a more varied program. The city will contribute 100 thousand crowns to it. “This year, in the first year, we did it in such a way that several publishing houses received the money – Albatros, Grada, Host – and they selected and invited their authors,” explains Hejkalová, according to whom it will be seen how it will work. “I hope it will be, because that’s why the program is double what it was in other years,” he emphasizes.
According to her, the support targets established authors who regularly participate in the fair, as well as lesser-known writers.
Among them, for example, the Czech-French writer Lenka Horňáková-Civade can be included. The fifty-three-year-old native of Prostejov has been living permanently in France since 1998. In 2019, she was nominated for the prestigious literary Prix Renaudot, and the year before last she became a knight of the French Order of Arts and Letters. In his most recent novel, Amsterdam Vigils, he describes the fictional meeting of Jan Amos Comenius and the painter Rembrandt van Rijn.
Writer and director of the Havlíčkobrod book fair Markéta Hejkalová. | Photo: Václav Vašků
“He writes in Czech and French, which actually corresponds to the motto of the Babylon of Stories fair, where the emphasis is on translation, on languages and on the fact that literature is a guide for man and the reader in the Babylon of the world,” adds Markéta Hejkalová.
Visitors will also be able to meet the best-selling novelist Alena Mornštajnová, illustrator Renata Fučíková, author of detective stories Michaela Klevisová, writer Aleš Palán, novelists Jiří Hájíček, Petr Stančík, Marko Torčík, Petra Soukupová and Lidmila Kábrtová, comedian Lukáš Pavlásk or journalists Josef Pazderka and Miroslav Karasem.
140 exhibitors registered for this year’s event, which is comparable to previous years. The autumn book market has been held in Havlíčková Brod since 1991, when its original goal was to mediate contacts between the then emerging publishers, booksellers and authors.