Czech Center New York presents a reading and conversation in Czech with author Kateřina Tučková and translator Véronique Firkusny. who translated her novel Gerta into English.
Registration here.
The program will be in Czech.
Kateřina Tučková about her trip to NYC: "I look forward to the European Literature Night a lot - it will be a great opportunity to meet my colleagues from other European countries and at the same time to connect with the American audience. During the last years, Amazon Crossing published English editions of my two books, Gerta and The Last Goddess. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was not possible to plan a book launch. Therefore, I am very happy that I will finally be able to present my books in person to US readers."
Kateřina Tučková (born 1980) is a Czech author, playwright, publicist and art historian. She has won several literary awards, including the Magnesia Litera Award (2010, 2013) and the Czech Bestseller Award (2012, 2022), she received the Czech State Award for Literature for her last novel in 2022. In 2017, she was awarded the Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights Award by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. She also has received the Premio Libro d’Europa at the Book Fair in Salerno, Italy. Her books include The Expulsion of Gerta Schnirch (2009), The Zitkova Goddesses (2012), or The White Water (2022) have been translated into twenty two languages.
More about Kateřina Tučková here.
Gerta
The Expulsion of Gerta Schnirch (Vyhnání Gerty Schnirch, 2009) was translated by Véronique Firkusny and published by Amazon Crossing in 2020.
On the night of 30 and 31 May 1945, Brno citizens of German nationality were sent to the so-called Brno Death March and expelled from the city. Gerta Schnirch, mother of a several-month-old daughter joins other women, children and old men and leaves as well. The gruelling march ends in the village of Pohořelice where many expellees succumb to the epidemic of typhoid and dysentery. Gerta survives as a forced labourer in South Moravia, where she remains even after the transports end. To regain her Czechoslovak citizenship, she returns home and experiences the tumultuous events of the second half of the twentieth century. The remarkably vivid and powerful novel asks painful questions about guilt, revenge and forgiveness between the Czechs and Germans and depicts a disturbed relationship between a mother and her daughter, affected not only by the restricted environment the marginalized Czech German women lived in, but also by the mutual misunderstanding of the two generations and the inability to convey their personal experience. The genius loci of the booming city of Brno provides an unmistakable atmosphere of the story.
More about Gerta here.
The Last Goddess
The Zitkova Goddesses (Žítkovské bohyně, 2012) was translated by Andrew Oakland and published by Amazon Crossing in 2022.
Once upon a time, a group of women with extraordinary abilities lived high in the hills of the White Carpathians. They knew how to heal people and help them in misery, they knew how to cope with trouble, and they could see the future. The so-called Žítková goddesses passed down their abilities from generation to generation. Dora Idesová is the last member of their family. She did not learn their art, but studied ethnography and decided to write an extensive scientific study about them. In the late 1990s, she discovered an operative file on the “internal enemy of the state” – her aunt, goddess Surmena. The file was created by the StB (the State Security), and kept in the archives of the Ministry of the Interior. Dora discovers the fate of the women from the village of Žítková and she is surprised to find out that although she did not become a goddess herself, she is an integral part of the secret traditions, too.
More about The Zitkova Goddesses here.
Books of Kateřina Tučková Gerta and The Last Goddess, published in English by Amazon Crossing, can be found on Amazon.com:
Kateřina Tučková will also present her book The Last Goddess during the European Literature Night 2023, which will take place at the Ukrainian Institute of America on November 2, 2023.
