Two Dogs Writing

Here are my top ten favourite Czech books in translation. In recognition of their hard work, I’ve also mentioned the translators for the editions I read. Yep, there’s always something arbitrary about top tens, but anyway, here goes:

1. Too Loud A Solitude, Bohumil Hrabal (translated by Michael Henry Heim). Such fine writing, earthy and sublime all at once. (Nice and short, too.)
2. City Sister Silver, Jáchym Topol (translated by Alex Zucker). Mesmeric and dense. A bit like a Czech Trainspotting.
3. The Questionnaire, Jiří Gruša (translated by Peter Kussi). A wonderfully absurd premise but not just clever, very affecting, too.
4. Judge on Trial, Ivan Klíma (translated by A.G. Brain). A humanistic novel of Czechia’s 20th century, with a panoramic sweep.
5. The Engineer of Human Souls, Josef Škvorecký (translated by Paul Wilson). Quite long, but worth the effort, my favourite of Škvorecký’s.
6. The Good Soldier Švejk, Jaroslav Hašek (translated by Cecil Parrott). Given my name, I have a soft spot for the double ‘š’ action going on here … but this is also a deserved classic that is genuinely funny and satirical.
7. The Czech Dream Book, Ludvík Vaculík (translated by Gerald Turner). Non-fiction biography. I was fascinated by this portrait of dissident life under communism.
8. The Memorandum, Vaclav Havel (translated by Vera Blackwell). Havel’s plays were the first Czech works I read. A very funny portrait of an organisational groupthink that applies beyond communism to today’s large corporations.
9. Empty Streets, Michal Ajvaz (translated by Andrew Oakland). It starts small, but builds up to a place of entertaining strangeness. It felt like Murakami at his best, with something else more insistent and enjoyably odd about it, too.
10. The Year of the Frog, Martin M Šimečka (translated by Peter Petro). A very simple story, but vividly told and with a pleasantly youthful voice.