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[ excerpt ]
Czech writing
Read about Jan Svankmajer here
Read an interview with the translator here
also by the author:
DVDs:
Collected Shorts
Faust
Little Otik
about the translator:
Gwendolyn Albert is from Oakland, California. She first came
to Prague in autumn 1989 on a Fulbright and witnessed the Velvet
Revolution first-hand, volunteering her time as a translator of
Civic Forum's daily public pronouncements. She is the co-founder
and Editrix of JEJUNE: america eats its young, and her
own prose and poetry have appeared in journals such as Exquisite
Corpse and Skanky Possum. She divides her time between Prague and Conneticut.
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baradla cave
by Eva Svankmajerova
translated from the Czech by Gwendolyn Albert
illustrated by the author and Jan Svankmajer
Baradla Cave is a novel by the Czech Surrealist Eva Svankmajerová,
who is perhaps best known for her paintings and collaboration
with her husband Jan Svankmajer on a number of films. Originally
published in samizdat in the 1980s, the book was republished in
1995 by Edice Analogon, having lost none of the force of its social
critique and wit. Baradla is a living organism, both place (Prague)
and person (a woman), and the novel explores maternity and femininity
while offering a satirical look at the overweening mother-state
and consumer society. As the language shifts between psuedo-scientific
jargon, common vernacular, and metaphoric stream, scenes of episodic
sexual violence alternate with humorous reflections on various
ingrained habits and customs. Svankmajerova's sense of the absurd
is seemingly without limit, fingering here practically everything
having to do with modern urban existence: drug addiction, murder,
sex crimes, corruption, and dysfunctional family relationships.
Praise:
Eva's Baradla is a work that will
live a long life. |
— Vratislav Effenberger
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How long must English-language readers wait for someone to translate her. |
— Penelope Rosemont (editor
of Surrealist Women)
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Svankmajerova's mode of literary expression
is in like manner heavily visual in character and, like
her paintings, the artist's writing reflects a delicate
balance of reality and irony, humor and terror. . . . The
novel is an astute and satirical — however troubling
— account of late 20th-century society. |
— Prager
Zeitung
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Svankmajerova's style of surrealism can be daunting at first. The stream-of-consciousness thoughts of one character often wind and wend their way into
the mind of another. Whether that mind belongs to a man, a woman, or a cave
is sometimes for the reader to decide. But her use of surrealism to convey
non-life under totalitarianism pre-dates the same technique visible in
Victor Pelevin's novel The Clay Machine Gun. Both works describe a
crumbling society speeding towards America's consumer lifestyle, with large
Japanese corporations in the driving seat. |
— Blue Ear
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ISBN 978 80 902171 7 1
140 pp.
14.5 x 20.5 cm
softcover with flaps
smythe sewn
5 full-color illustrations
fiction : novel
temporarily out of stock,
reprint forthcoming
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