ROSIE-ON-THE-ROAD by Rosie Goldsmith: Prague. What’s Happening in Czech Literature? Report on Prague Book World, 15-18 May 2025
Photo: Rosie Goldsmith with Katerina Tučková (L) and Bianca Bellová (R) at the launch of Prague Book World 2025
Away from the spectacular tourist sights of Prague, far from Wenceslas Square, Charles Bridge, Prague Castle or the astronomical clock, is a tent city housing a world of books, and attracting equal numbers of crowds, but here the crowds are mostly Czech and home-grown. This is Prague Book World (Svět knihy Praha) on the outskirts of the city, and it’s in its 30th anniversary year. A cross between a festival and fair, it is the largest gathering of book-lovers and book-makers in the Czech Republic. It is also increasingly international and important for all of us who want to familiarise ourselves with Czech literature.
Events across the three days take place in marquees, small and large, reminding me of the many events I’ve hosted at the Hay-on-Wye Festival in Wales and the challenges posed by high winds and flapping tarpaulins. But here the tents are smaller, tents named after Czech writers, such as Seifert, Kundera and Havel, with the largest venue named after Kafka. “Kafka” hosted the big names at Prague Book World, Bulgaria’s Georgi Gospodinov, Ukraine’s Andrey Kurkov, Poland’s Olga Tokarczuk, and Guest of Honour Portuguese writers Lidia Jorge, Rui Zink and João Luís Barreto Guimarães, among others. Delighted as I was to see them again, my main goal in Prague was to meet Czech writers.
Since Brexit and since Covid, like many of us in the UK working in the field of European literature, even though we’ve continued to read, translate, publish and promote European books, we are less well-informed, and, to be honest, cut off from what’s happening on the ground in the rest of Europe. Invitations and funding to attend festivals and trade fairs abroad are rarer. There’s a pettiness, small-mindedness and exhausting competitiveness among UK stakeholders resulting from this isolation, and from the sorry state of arts funding in the UK, whereas for me the message must be collaboration and shared values. I am not in this for the money (no one is paying me) or the glory but to make sure that our European literary ties flourish and prosper. I feel the urgent need to remind Europe that we are still here, alive and kicking, in spite of Brexit (something that 97% of the Creative Industries in the UK did not vote for). Here at the European Literature Network, we believe that meeting authors, publishers, translators, booksellers and festival directors in person is essential to the health of the UK’s literary ecosystem. This year, in preparation for another European Writers’ Festival in 2026, publishing more Riveter magazines and for setting up my new European cultural foundation in the UK, I’m on the road again. So far I’ve been to Madrid, Reykjavik and Prague, soon I’m off to Tallinn, Paris, Trieste and, in the autumn, Vilnius and Krems/Vienna (and I’m open to more invitations). Face-to-face meetings are priceless, more than I could possibly achieve over a Zoom call. Many of the best deals and ideas occur through conversation and chance encounters; they happen through contact with and understanding the physical geography, local economy, politics, history, culture and language that shape writers. From Reykjavik to Madrid, we may all worry about climate change, immigration, war, racism and censorship, but how we write about them is shaped by where we write from. In Prague I was reminded that 60 per cent of what Czechs read is in translation. Imagine! We read perhaps 6 per cent in translation in the UK. Czechs went through communism, their writers (Havel, Klima and so on) wrote under great stress. We need to understand their unique origins and influences to help promote and enjoy their literature.
In November 1989 I stood in Wenceslas Square looking up at a balcony with thousands of Czechoslovaks (and hundreds of journalists) and listened to Václav Havel proclaiming freedom and revolution. Over those months of turmoil and unrest, I tumbled from revolution to revolution, a chance witness to history. Those months, my first at the BBC, my first job, were the most formative of my life and have since motivated me to continue to uphold the European values of shared cultures, freedoms and friendships from those times. Today they are under threat; they always are, but these are especially tough times. Czechs today certainly do not want to only write about trauma and their past but they are shaped by it, and we need to understand it.
So what were my experiences at Prague Book World 2025?
You can’t beat an opening party in a Prague Castle. Presided over by the director of Prague Book World, Radovan Auer, and by my main point of contact, the dapper and indefatigable Martin Krafl, Director of ENLIT and the Czech Literary Centres (read his thoughts HERE), with Tomáš Kubíček, Director of the Moravian Library, introduced to all of us as the director of Czechia 2026, when the Czech Republic will be Guest of Honour at Frankfurt Book Fair next year – an honour indeed and a chance for Prague to shine its light across the world. (Read my interview with Professor Kubíček HERE). I wandered the exquisite palace gardens with one of the stars of Czech Lit, Bianca Bellová, whole novel The Lake, translated by Alex Zucker, won the EBRD International Book Prize. Her new novel The Invisible Man will be out in English in 2026. Here I also reunited with another wonderful Czech writer, Katerina Tučková, who appeared at our first European Writers Festival in 2023.
Next day, in more comfortable shoes, I trod the book fairgrounds, seeing in action: bestselling author and illustrator Alena Mornštajnová and Galina Miklínová (the Donaldson and Scheffler of Czech literature, surrounded by adoring children); Iva Pekárková; Jana LeBlanc; Jan Němec speaking with Jana Šrámková; dynamic young poets Ondřej Macl and Anna Luňáková; Irish writer Claire Kilroy discussing motherhood with Czech journalist and author Klara Vlasáková; Norwegian novelist of renown Vigdis Hjorth in conversation with Pavla Horáková.
Very pleased to hear also that previous Czech favourites of mine Petra Hůlová, Michal Ajvaz and Jaroslav Kalfař are still creatively prolific. My interest is also whetted by Czech writers Petra Soukupová, Jaroslav Rudiš, Jiří Hájíček, Dita Táborská, Petra Dvořáková, Anna Bolavá, Karin Lednická, Viktorie Hanišová and Radka Denemarková. NB. About 50 per cent of Czech prose writers publishing today are women. And while I’ve got your attention (you’ve read this far!), I’d like to tempt you further with my selection of authors from NEW CZECH BOOKS 2024 (the excellent CzechLit brochure is HERE): novelists Emma Kausc, Jonáš Zbořil, Kristina Hamplová, Iva Hadj Moussa, David Zábranský and Petr Stančik, and poets Lubomír Tichý, Iryna Zahladko and Ivan Wernisch. If it were in my power, I’d happily invite any and all of them to participate and publish in the UK.
An additional joyfully buzzy encounter was in the comics tent at Prague Book World: I had heard that Czechs, young and old, liked comics and graphic novels but this marquee was insanely busy and febrile with excitement. I’ll name just one here from so many: Tereza Verecká and Mikuláš Podprocký and their book Winton Was Not Alone.
Reconnecting with the European continent on this road trip, my final evening at Prague Book World was perfect. This was the annual award ceremony of the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL), which this year was taking place in Prague. Once the UK had been a player in the EUPL (I even hosted the ceremony once in Brussels) and once, with regularity, we invited EUPL winners, like Bianca Bellová, to the UK, to participate in our events. Hence, for me, this was an evening of both poignancy and inspiration. Thirteen authors selected from 100s across Europe had been shortlisted, from Georgia to Belgium, and their books recommended for translation. (Their website is HERE).The overall winner was the Italian writer Nicoletta Verna with her book I giorni di Vetro. Chatting to Nicoletta later in Italian and hearing the snap, crackle and pop of Europe’s many languages around me, I felt recharged and determined to ensure sure that we in Britain keep our doors open to the best of European literature.
Rosie Goldsmith
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Rosie Goldsmith is Director and Founder of the European Literature Network and Editor-in-Chief of The Riveter. She was a BBC broadcaster for twenty years and is today an arts journalist and presenter. She was chair of the judges for the EBRD Literature Prize 2018–2020.
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