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.