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| Tomáš Zmeškal |
Londoners are in for a real Ruritanian treat on 12 May when authors Tomáš Zmeškal and Hamid Ismailov are to be found in conversation with Ruritanian revisionist theorist, Misha Glenny.
Hamid Ismailov’s latest book The Dead Lake, long-listed for the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction
Prize, is a haunting Russian tale about environmental legacy of the Cold War.
It tells a story of a gifted violinist Yerzhan growing up on the Kazakh
steppes, the Soviet test ground for atomic weapons. Yerzhan falls in love with
the neighbour’s daughter and to impress her, he dives into a forbidden lake. Its
radioactive water stops his growth and he becomes trapped in a boy’s body while
the girl he loves grows into a beautiful woman. Drawing attention to atomic
tests taking place between 1945 and 1989 in Kazakhstan, Ismailov creates a
parable of modern arms race impacting on people’s lives and tradition.
Tomáš Zmeškal’s debut novel "Love Letter
in Cuneiform" is a family saga - a story of marriage, love and destiny
set in Czechoslovakia between the 1940s and 1990s. Josef meets his wife,
Květa, before the WWII at a public lecture and she marries him instead
of their mutual friend Hynek. But when her husband is arrested and
unlawfully imprisoned, Květa gives herself to Hynek in return for help
and advice. Exploring what is not spoken, what cannot be said and the
repercussions of silence, Zmeškal's tale, told as a mosaic of events,
exposes the larger, ongoing struggle of post communist Eastern Europe to
come to terms with suffering when catharsis is denied.
Full details can be found here
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