about the translator:
Marek Tomin was born in Prague and grew up in England, where his family found refuge
after being exiled in 1980 by the Communist regime. A graduate of Oxford University, he lives
in Prague where he works as a freelance translator, journalist, documentary producer, and
contemporary art curator. Closely involved with Greenpeace, Tomin has sailed the Atlantic on
numerous occasions. His translations include Emil Hakl's Of Kids & Parents,
Ladislav Klima's Glorious Nemesis, and the lyrics of the Plastic People of the Universe.
Read a profile here.
Musician, artist and poet, Pavel Z. was one of the leading figures of the Czech underground that operated
outside the official culture imposed by the former communist regime. The trial that sent him and several
others associated with the experimental rock group the Plastic People of the Universe to prison for their
activities gave rise to the human rights declaration Charter 77. Later exiled, Pavel Z. first lived in Sweden
and then in New York City, eventually resettling in Prague in the mid-1990s. Time Is a Mid-Night Scream
is his poetic testimony of this period, a time of transformation for both himself and his city.
The book is a speculative journey across a decade that found the exile returning home
to a place that had changed beyond measure; the feeling of placelessness lingers throughout, even when
specific places are named — they don't seem to exist outside the universe presented on the page. [...]
If you had to give this placelessness a name, it would be the alcohol-burned nighttime haze of Bohemia, a faint
neon glow emerging somewhere from behind a thick cloud of cigarette smoke.
— Travis Jeppesen (author of Disorientations)
ISBN: 978 80 86264 26 4
96 pp.
14.5 x 20.5 cm
2 b&w illustrations
softcover with flaps
poetry
