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:
- Too Loud A Solitude, Bohumil Hrabal (translated by Michael Henry Heim). Such fine writing, earthy and sublime all at once. (Nice and short, too.)
- City Sister Silver, Jáchym Topol (translated by Alex Zucker). Mesmeric and dense. A bit like a Czech Trainspotting.
- The Questionnaire, Jiří Gruša (translated by Peter Kussi). A wonderfully absurd premise but not just clever, very affecting, too.
- Judge on Trial, Ivan Klíma (translated by A.G. Brain). A humanistic novel of Czechia’s 20th century, with a panoramic sweep.
- The Engineer of Human Souls, Josef Škvorecký (translated by Paul Wilson). Quite long, but worth the effort, my favourite of Škvorecký’s.
- 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.
- The Czech Dream Book, Ludvík Vaculík (translated by Gerald Turner). Non-fiction biography. I was fascinated by this portrait of dissident life under communism.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Two Dogs Writing 