Ruritania comes to London on 12 May

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.

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. 

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.

Full details can be found here

Three Faces of an Angel - Jiří Pehe book review

This gripping and at times horrific saga detailing the lives of three generations of a German-Czech-Jewish family is very definitely a text for those with a strong interest in 20the century history. It is also raises a number of questions about politics, identity and religion. As you might expect, the novel contains tragic episodes beginning in Prague before 1914 and ending on the morning of 9/11 in a café next to the World Trade Centre. 

The triumphant final section of the book will be of particular delight to students of intellectual masturbation. The author, a political scientist, gives voice to his monstrous character, Alex, in a bruising and well argued critique of the notions of "Cold War Studies" morphing into "Globalisation" and then "post-colonialism" as practised by "best selling author-academics" in the 1970s and 1980s. Fortunately, those notions are now airbrushed from intellectual history but the bastard child they inspired is the wickedly funny notion of "the Globalization of postmodernism". 

Added to this is the frequent appearance of the angel, Ariel. Not as well known as Michael or Gabriel or in Jewish or Christian sacred texts, he is a very disturbing presence, sometimes benign, at other times downright homicidal.

Václav Havel described the original Czech text as “remarkable”, Ivan Klíma wrote that is was “one of the most outstanding novels written in the Czech lands since 1989. A truly Central European novel with a universal message”. However unlikely, it was in fact Tomáš Halík who summed up the novel best as “an unusual and powerful novel about the 20^th century, the Holocaust in particular, but also about God”. Halík being a Jesuit priest, academic sociologist and winner of the Templeton Prize in 2014 might be the best judge of nuance in this case but not all.

With scenes of the Holocaust, fighting in Siberia and a particularly sensitive description of mental illness, this book is not for the faint-hearted. It is however, a major contribution to understanding the twentieth century experience west of France and north of the Mediterranean. It is funny, scary and thought provoking - Ruritanian Gothic with angels thrown in. Liberating! 

 

Comics from far far away available in English

One of the more creative outlets for the youth of Ruritania lie in the amazing variety and quality of the comic books...even older people read them. The Ruritanian is a particular fan of Jaromír 99 who doesn't actually appear in the list on this blog. However, we're still very happy to see others out there, too!

https://literarytranslators.wordpress.com/2016/03/02/10-eastern-european-comic-books-in-translation-you-need-to-read-now/