Kind words from a blogger in Prague

"If you think life is hard, give Mongolia a try!" (Thanks, Terry. Glad you liked it.)

Petra's first post v překladu

My rough translation of Petra's first post, banged out last night and this morning:

"First of all I'm enormously happy it worked out. Now it's up to the book. The umbilical cord is severed. Now the only question is whether or not anyone in faraway America will notice you, dear book . . . Alex said that they don't have any novels from contemporary Mongolia yet, so that sounds hopeful . . .

"When Alex and I were in Chicago two weeks ago to promote the book, Andrew Wachtel from Northwestern University Press said: Americans can talk on and on about things they don't know about at all, while Europeans can't talk about anything even when they know a lot about it. He was referring to academics but I have a hunch it's the same way with writers. Or at least with me. What could I say about my own book? That it’s a piece of my life? Not interesting. An attempt at a portrait of the Mongol mentality? Written by a Czech? Hmm. But don’t Americans write about other countries, too? That it’s a portrait of a post-communist country wrestling with the challenges of newly gotten freedom like the Czechs in the 1990s? In one review in a German newspaper they wrote that the book was a metaphor for post-revolution Eastern Europe. That it isn’t actually about Mongolia. Sometimes that’s what I tell people — the ones who are afraid of Mongolia and who are interested more in good old Europe than in Central Asia — to try to appeal to them.

"Luckily, at the readings in New York and Chicago, the audience had enough questions that I didn’t have to babble on in desperation.

"It was my first time in Chicago. I lived more than a year in New York at one point, and there was a time when I wanted to stay there for good. Until I started to panic that I was losing my Czech and I was talking to myself in Czech so I wouldn’t get out of practice. Without Czech is like having one leg for me. So I live in Prague. My books travel. I wave across the ocean at them from my windowless room that I climb up a ladder to reach, the former darkroom where I’m now at work on my next novel."

Petra's first post! (in Czech, of course)

Především mám pořád ohromnou radost, že se to povedlo. Teď už je to na knize. Pupeční šňůra je přestřižená. Teď jen: zdalipak si tě v té daleké Americe někdo všimne, milá kniho . . . Alex říkal, že tam ještě žádný román ze současného Mongolska nemají, tak to zní nadějně . . .

Když jsme byli s Alexem před dvěma týdny propagovat knihu v Chicagu, prohlásil tam na univerzitě Andrew Wachtel z NWP: Američané, ti se dokáží namluvit o něčem, o čem ani nic pořádně nevědí, zatímco Evropané nedokážou pořádně hovořit ani o něčem, co velmi dobře znají. Řeč šla o akademicích, ale se spisovateli je to tuším podobné. Nebo alespoň se mnou. Co bych tak o téhle vlastní knize řekla? Že je to kus mého života? Nezajímavé. Pokus o portrét mongolské mentality? Hmm. Ale psaný Češkou? A Američané snad o jiných krajích nepíší? Že je to obraz postkomunistické země potýkající se s nešvary nově nabyté svobody podobně jako Česko devadesátých let? V jakési recenzi v německých novinách psali, že kniha je metaforou porevoluční východní Evropy. Že o Mongolsko v ní vlastně až tolik nejde. Občas to takhle lidem říkám - těm, co mají strach z Mongolska a víc než Střední Asie je zajímá stará dobrá Evropa a já se je snažím zlákat.

Ještě štěstí, že na čteních v New Yorku a Chicagu mělo tolik posluchačů připravené otázky a tak jsem nemusela z bezradnosti mlít páté přes deváté.

V Chicagu jsem byla poprvé. V New Yorku jsem žila déle než rok a kdysi jsem tam snad toužila zůstat napořád. Než jsem zjistila, že panikařím, když se mi čeština začíná ztrácet a já si sama pro sebe melu česky, abych nevyšla ze cviku. Bez češtiny jsem jako bez nohy. Takže žiji v Praze. Cestují moje knihy. Mávám jim přes oceán z komůrky bez oken, do níž se leze po žebříku, z bývalé fotokomory, kde právě pracuji na dalším románu.

Czech press jumps aboard ATBTM bandwagon

And I mean it in the most positive way.

For those of you who know Czech, at novinky.cz you can read ČTK correspondent Zdeněk Fučík's article about last week's event here in New York, which also ran in Saturday's edition of the daily newspaper Právo. A different version of Fučík's story ran on Friday in České noviny.

For those of you who don't know Czech, you can read (and listen to) the latest interview with Petra on Czech Radio, posted just yesterday, in which she discusses her memories of the Velvet Revolution as a ten-year-old child, her sometime preference for setting her stories in other countries, and her views of the older generations and the place of women in Czech literature.

ATBTM A-OK in NYC

Thursday night's reading at the Czech Center New York went swimmingly, with approximately thirty people in attendance (including ČTK correspondent Zdeněk Fučík, one of the translators of Gravity's Rainbow into Czech!) and many interesting questions posed from the floor. Photos of the event, courtesy of Jan Žahour, can be viewed at the All This Belongs to Me Facebook page. Our good friend Jirka Zavadil also shot some nice pics, which are posted there as well.

Meanwhile, there are already two customer reviews posted at Amazon, and we're looking forward to some attention from the press after October 30, the official publication date.

Thanks to all of you who came on Thursday, and we hope you enjoy the book!

Takin' it on the road with ATBTM

City of Big Shoulders take heed! Petra Hůlová is coming in for a landing Thursday, October 15, courtesy of the Czech Consulate General in Chicago.

As part of a program titled Velvet Redux: 20 Years of Freedom in Central and Eastern Europe, the Consulate General and Northwestern University, in cooperation with the Prague Committee of Chicago Sister Cities International Program, Andrew Wachtel, dean of Northwestern's Graduate School and editor of the Writings from an Unbound Europe imprint at Northwestern University Press, will be moderating a reading and roundtable titled Twenty Years of Laughter and Forgetting: Eastern/Central European Literature Since 1989. Besides Hůlová, on behalf of the Czechs, the other writers will be Ferenc Barnás of Hungary and Drago Jančar from Slovenia.

Petra, I must say with pride, features prominently on the page pushing the event, taking place from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., in the Forum Room of Northwestern University Library, 1970 Campus Drive, 2-South, Evanston, IL 60208. It is free of charge and open to the public. Hope to see you there.

Prague Post profile of Petra pleasingly positive

All credit to Lisette Allen and the Prague Post for running the first newspaper article about All This Belongs to Me. In it, Hůlová discusses the origins of the novel in her 2000–2001 stay in Mongolia as an undergraduate student at Charles University; her close collaboration on the translation with Alex Zucker (y. truly); whether or not the Czech Republic can be compared to Mongolia; and whether or not being a writer makes one intelligent, interesting, or wise.

Welcome, dear readers of up-to-the-minute Czech lit!

This blog, along with the Facebook page that I've set up, exists for no other reason than to let the online world know about the fabulous first novel by Czech author Petra Hůlová, All This Belongs to Me, now available for purchase from Amazon.com (at a 33% discount!) as well as a host of other sites selling books in cyberspace.