The Vow: A Requiem for the Fifties

By Jiří Kratochvil

Can something that exists merely as a literary text, say a story, come about in real life? Can reality, to put it another way, steal something from literature, the same way literature steals from reality? Such is the question that Libor Hrach, the author of The Adventures of the Wise Badger, fields one even

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glagoslav Publications B.V.
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781914337574

Jiří Kratochvil

Jiří Kratochvil (b. 1940) is a novelist, short-story writer, essayist and playwright. His first collection of short stories Případ s Chatnoirem [The Black Cat Case, 1971] displeased the Communist authorities and led to his black-listing. From that time forward, until the fall of Communism, he published his fiction, which blends magical realism autobiography, in the underground press. His 1999 novel, Noční tango aneb Román jednoho léta z konce století [Nocturnal Tango, or a Novel of One Year from the End of the Century] was awarded the Jaroslav Seifert Prize. Slib [The Vow] contains autobiographical elements - such as the emigration of his father Josef (1915-2001) in the early fifties, and his own repression by Communist authorities - like the character Dan Kočí, he worked as a manual labourer. He has been awarded several literary prizes, such as the Tom Stoppard Prize (1991), the Egon Hostovský Prize (1996), the Karel Čapek Prize (1998), and the Magnesia Litera Award for Prose (2020). His books have been published in seventeen languages. He lives in Moravský Krumlov.

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