2024-09-15 06:46:36
New books by Evžen Boček, Miloš Urban or Jaroslav Rudiš will be part of the autumn 25th edition of the Great Book Thursday. As part of a sales event focused on novelties from leading Czech publishing houses, 15 works by domestic and foreign creators will appear on booksellers’ counters on October 17.
The title Dr. Alz. In this story, a former publishing editor learns from doctors about his incipient progressive dementia and decides to write down everything he can still remember.
Four years younger, Jaroslav Rudiš, laureate of the Jiří Orten and Magnesia Litera Prizes, called his book Christmas in Prague. In it, he pays tribute not only to the Czech metropolis and its history, but also to people who sometimes feel completely alone in their lives. The novel, which begins with the writer’s arrival by train from Berlin to Prague’s Main Station, was accompanied by special illustrations by Jaromír 99. Rudiš first published the text last year in German under the title Weihnachten in Prag, and it has now been translated into Czech by Michaela Škultéty.
Evžen Boček also included his next prose in this year’s Great Book Thursday, whose series of books about the fate of the fictional aristocrat Maria III. Kostková and her family sold over half a million copies. The story called Aristocrat in Czechoslovakia takes place in 1983, i.e. in the time that precedes the entire saga.
“Aristocrat in Czechoslovakia is an author’s concert for a popular castle trio, a quartet of communist functionaries, two sexy cats from Prague and Brno and one international soloist in a socialist setting,” reads the annotation, according to which former communist politician Vasil Biľak and dissident Václav Havel.
Journalist and columnist Krystyna Wanatowiczová wrote a political and social portrait of Vítězslav Nezval, one of the greatest Czech poets of the 20th century. The monograph will have over 750 pages.
Another journalist, Renata Kalenská, in her book Frozen Souls, uncovers the stories of female and male victims of sexualized violence in personal interviews. “I insisted that every story should have a good ending, that there should be hope,” says Kalenská, who works for Deník N. She was inspired to compile the book by Jasmína Houdek, a lecturer of self-defense courses for women.
Contemporary world literature is represented in the autumn Great Book Thursday in the historical fiction The Smile of Caterina – The Story of Leonardo’s Mother. The author of this prose is the Italian philologist and professor of literature Carlo Vecce, one of the most important experts on Leonardo da Vinci and Renaissance culture.
The 70-year-old German writer Brigitte Riebe returns to Berlin in May 1945 in the novel Sisters from Berlin – New Beginnings. It tells the story of sisters living in a war-torn metropolis.
Americanist and professor at New York University in Prague, Tomáš Klvaňa, in the book The World According to Trump, evaluates the former American president and current Republican candidate Donald Trump from his rise from the environment of the real estate business in New York to show business and finally politics.
Ivana Chmel Denčevová focuses on remarkable women in the book Osudové ženy – 33 stories of extraordinary lives. Readers will be introduced to the vicissitudes of Alma Mahlerová, Sidonia Nádherná, Slávka Peroutková, Ivana Tigridová, Meda Mládková or Dana Němcová.
For fans of detective stories, the debut of the Swedish author Lina Areklew called Slunovrat is intended. Jozef Karika’s new film Black Year: The Mafia War, which takes place in Slovakia in the 1990s, will also bring tension.
Poet and novelist Petr Motýl included the book Life and work of the poet Ivan Wernisch in the selection. It literary processes authentic memories of the Czech author, comparing them with his published poetry and prose texts, interviews, radio programs and television documentaries.
Two contemporary poets, winners of the Magnesia Litera award Martin Reiner and Milan Ohnisko, converse in the book Reiner: Rozhovor Milana Ohnisko. It reflects Reiner’s life from his difficult childhood to more than thirty years of publishing activity.
Children’s literature will be enriched by Velký knižní Thursday with a publication called Let it go well with the subtitle Příběhostruj for the whole family. The title of René Nekudy was accompanied by illustrations by the comic creator and artist Nikkarin. Martin Sodomka, whose first volume, How to build a car, received considerable acclaim both at home and abroad, comes with the new book How to start a farm.
Big Book Thursday in the Czech Republic takes place on the model of the Super Thursday event, which symbolically starts the Christmas shopping season in British bookstores. The local equivalent took place for the first time in October 2011, since then it has included 336 domestic and foreign titles. Almost six dozen of them became bestsellers, with a total of more than 2.4 million copies sold.