Upcoming Events
Heather Clark Reading & Book Launch - The Scrapbook
U Luzickeho seminare 10 (3.7.2025)
HEATHER CLARK - The Scrapbook
A debut novel about a life-changing romance in the long shadow of European history, inspired by the author's real discovery.
'A singular portrait of intoxicating young love' AUBE REY LESCURE
'You wouldn't be able to put it down' SAMANTHA ROSE HILL
For years after I tried to tell myself that what happened between us was hardly worth remembering.
Harvard, 1996. Anna is about to graduate when she meets Christoph, a German student visiting campus. They only spend a week together – discussing art, ideas and history – but it is long enough for Anna to fall desperately in love. Anna begins to visit Christoph in Germany. As she tries to understand the young, elegant man who fascinates her, he reveals his country to her.
Germany is still reckoning with the Holocaust and its pretty new squares and grand facades belie its recent history and the war’s destruction. Christoph condemns his country’s actions but remains vague about the part his own grandparents played. Anna’s grandfather, meanwhile, was an American GI who took photos of the end of the war, photos that capture its horror, preserved in a scrapbook only Anna has seen.
Anna wants to believe in Christoph and the future he promises her but as their relationship becomes increasingly unsettling, she must face up to everything she has been unwilling to see, and everything Christoph has chosen to ignore.
Heather Clark is the author of four works of non-fiction, including Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (published by Jonathan Cape), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LA Times Book Prize in Biography, and was the winner of the Slightly Foxed Prize and the Truman Capote Prize (awarded by the Iowa Writers’ Workshop). It was a Book of the Year in the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Times and New York Times. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Time, Lit Hub, and TLS. She has recently received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Centre. The Scrapbook is her debut novel.
Reading starts at 7:00PM FREE ENTRY
Growing up under socialism in the 1970s and 1980s
U Luzickeho seminare 10 (14.4.2016)
A panel discussion and sharing of anecdotes of growing up in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s based on the adventures described in Michal Viewegh's "Bliss was it in Bohemia".
Pavla Jonssonová will be joined in discussion by Martin Machovec, Jíří Pehe and Tomáš Míka.
Reading starts at 7:00PM FREE ENTRY
Pavla Jonssonová will be joined in discussion by Martin Machovec, Jíří Pehe and Tomáš Míka.
Reading starts at 7:00PM FREE ENTRY
Steve Crawshaw: Small Acts of Resistance
U Luzickeho seminare 10 (14.9.2015)
Steve Crawshaw will read from his new book: Small Acts of Resistance
Reading starts at 6:00PM
Steve Crawshaw is a former journalist at the Independent and now a senior adviser at Amnesty International.
The late Vaclav Havel, playwright and president, famously wrote of the "power of the powerless". Steve Crawshaw, who witnessed Prague's "velvet revolution" as well as many others around the world, is co-author of Small Acts of Resustance: How Courage, Tenacity and Ingenuity Can Change the World, recently published also in Czech, for which Havel wrote the preface. He will be telling stories of protest, mischief and surprising change.
Reading starts at 6:00PM
Steve Crawshaw is a former journalist at the Independent and now a senior adviser at Amnesty International.
The late Vaclav Havel, playwright and president, famously wrote of the "power of the powerless". Steve Crawshaw, who witnessed Prague's "velvet revolution" as well as many others around the world, is co-author of Small Acts of Resustance: How Courage, Tenacity and Ingenuity Can Change the World, recently published also in Czech, for which Havel wrote the preface. He will be telling stories of protest, mischief and surprising change.
David J. Haskins: Who Killed Mister Moonlight? Reading / Signing
U Luzickeho seminare 10 (4.6.2015)
David J. Haskins will read from his new book: Who Killed Mister Moonlight?
Reading starts at 7:00PM
Beginning with the creation of Bauhaus’s seminal debut hit ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’, David J. Haskins offers a no-holds-barred account of his band’s rapid rise to fame and glory in the late 70s, their sudden dissolution in the 80s, and their subsequent (and often strained) reunions.
In between, he explores his work as a solo performer, and with acclaimed trio Love And Rockets—culminating in the devastating fire that ripped through the sessions for their 1996 album Sweet F.A. He also delves deep into his exploration of the occult, drawing together a diverse cast of supporting characters, including William S. Burroughs, Alan Moore, Genesis P. Orridge, and Rick Rubin.
'In a breathtaking ride along a flume of ink and sequins, David J. plots the delirious trajectory of a band who sparked the gothic movement's second extraordinary emergence from among the cut-throat history and thousand-year-old churches of Northampton; who invented an epic fin de siècle mythology and then became it; who pushed their art and their performance far beyond the boundaries of what was safe or even survivable; and who ably demonstrated that pop music will send you mad even faster than magic. Heroic and absurd, scurrilous and profound, Who Killed Mister Moonlight? charts the descent of four intelligent young men with faces like ruby-eyed dime-store skull rings into a glittering and very modern maelstrom. Fast, compelling, and disarmingly honest, this is an invaluable account of a strange and spectral cultural twilight era that we shall almost certainly never see again. Highly recommended.'
Alan Moore
Reading starts at 7:00PM
Beginning with the creation of Bauhaus’s seminal debut hit ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’, David J. Haskins offers a no-holds-barred account of his band’s rapid rise to fame and glory in the late 70s, their sudden dissolution in the 80s, and their subsequent (and often strained) reunions.
In between, he explores his work as a solo performer, and with acclaimed trio Love And Rockets—culminating in the devastating fire that ripped through the sessions for their 1996 album Sweet F.A. He also delves deep into his exploration of the occult, drawing together a diverse cast of supporting characters, including William S. Burroughs, Alan Moore, Genesis P. Orridge, and Rick Rubin.
'In a breathtaking ride along a flume of ink and sequins, David J. plots the delirious trajectory of a band who sparked the gothic movement's second extraordinary emergence from among the cut-throat history and thousand-year-old churches of Northampton; who invented an epic fin de siècle mythology and then became it; who pushed their art and their performance far beyond the boundaries of what was safe or even survivable; and who ably demonstrated that pop music will send you mad even faster than magic. Heroic and absurd, scurrilous and profound, Who Killed Mister Moonlight? charts the descent of four intelligent young men with faces like ruby-eyed dime-store skull rings into a glittering and very modern maelstrom. Fast, compelling, and disarmingly honest, this is an invaluable account of a strange and spectral cultural twilight era that we shall almost certainly never see again. Highly recommended.'
Alan Moore
A Kingdom of Souls Prague launch
U Luzickeho seminare 10 (15.5.2015)
Jantar Publishing is very pleased to invite you to the launch of ‘A Kingdom of Souls’ [Podobojí] by Daniela Hodrová, published for the first time in English translated by Véronique Firkusny and Elena Sokol.
“Through playful poetic prose, imaginatively blending historical and cultural motifs with autobiographical moments, Daniela Hodrova shares her unique perception of Prague. A Kingdom of Souls is the first volume of this author’s literary journey — an unusual quest for self, for one’s place in life and in the world, a world that for Hodrová is embodied in Prague.” - Elena Sokol from her introduction to A Kingdom of Souls.
Jantar Publishing will also be launching a new and updated edition of ‘Prague. I see a city…’ by the same author.
The author, Daniela Hodrová, and the translators Veronique Firkusny and Elena Sokol will be in discussion with the broadcaster David Vaughan.
Free wine and nibbles will be served. Books will be on sale.
Reading starts at 7:00PM FREE ENTRY
“Through playful poetic prose, imaginatively blending historical and cultural motifs with autobiographical moments, Daniela Hodrova shares her unique perception of Prague. A Kingdom of Souls is the first volume of this author’s literary journey — an unusual quest for self, for one’s place in life and in the world, a world that for Hodrová is embodied in Prague.” - Elena Sokol from her introduction to A Kingdom of Souls.
Jantar Publishing will also be launching a new and updated edition of ‘Prague. I see a city…’ by the same author.
The author, Daniela Hodrová, and the translators Veronique Firkusny and Elena Sokol will be in discussion with the broadcaster David Vaughan.
Free wine and nibbles will be served. Books will be on sale.
Reading starts at 7:00PM FREE ENTRY
Prague Launch of The Thing About Prague and Little Globetrotters Visit Paris
U Luzickeho seminare 10 (29.11.2014)
Welcome to the Prague Launch of
The Thing About Prague by Rachael Weiss
and
Little Globetrotters visit Paris by Karen York
Rachael Weiss will read from her book The Thing About Prague followed by discussion.
Karen York will read from her book Little Globetrotters Visit Paris followed by discussion.
Rachael Weiss is an Australian author, living and writing in Dublin. Her first three books are Me, Myself and Prague, Are We There Yet? and The Thing About Prague.
She is currently working on her fourth book.
Karen York is the author of two children's books, Susie and Tom Travel the World and Little Globetrotters Visit Paris.
Reading starts at 3:30PM FREE ENTRY
Rachael Weiss will read from her book The Thing About Prague followed by discussion.
Karen York will read from her book Little Globetrotters Visit Paris followed by discussion.
Rachael Weiss is an Australian author, living and writing in Dublin. Her first three books are Me, Myself and Prague, Are We There Yet? and The Thing About Prague.
She is currently working on her fourth book.
Karen York is the author of two children's books, Susie and Tom Travel the World and Little Globetrotters Visit Paris.
Reading starts at 3:30PM FREE ENTRY
Christian Kiefer & Michal Ajvaz Reading
U Luzickeho seminare 10 (17.6.2014)
Christian Kiefer will read from his book The Infinite Tides followed by discussion.
Michal Ajvaz will read from his book The Golden Age followed by discussion.
Christian Kiefer Christian Kiefer earned his Ph.D. in American literature from the University of California, Davis, and is on the English faculty of American River College in Sacramento. He is an active poet, songwriter, and recording artist, and lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California with his wife and six sons. The Infinite Tides is his first published novel.
Michal Ajvaz Michal Ajvaz is a Czech novelist, essayist, poet, and translator. In 2005, he was awarded the Jaroslav Seifert Prize for his novel Prázdné ulice (Empty Streets). He is a researcher at Prague’s Center for Theoretical Studies. In addition to fiction, he has published an essay on Derrida, a book-length meditation on Borges, and a philosophical study on the act of seeing.
Reading starts at 7:00PM FREE ENTRY
Michal Ajvaz will read from his book The Golden Age followed by discussion.
Christian Kiefer Christian Kiefer earned his Ph.D. in American literature from the University of California, Davis, and is on the English faculty of American River College in Sacramento. He is an active poet, songwriter, and recording artist, and lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California with his wife and six sons. The Infinite Tides is his first published novel.
Michal Ajvaz Michal Ajvaz is a Czech novelist, essayist, poet, and translator. In 2005, he was awarded the Jaroslav Seifert Prize for his novel Prázdné ulice (Empty Streets). He is a researcher at Prague’s Center for Theoretical Studies. In addition to fiction, he has published an essay on Derrida, a book-length meditation on Borges, and a philosophical study on the act of seeing.
Reading starts at 7:00PM FREE ENTRY
Kytice launch in the Czech Republic
U Luzickeho seminare 10 (16.5.2014)
On Friday, May 16th, Jantar Publishing + Shakespeare and Sons Bookstore will host an evening with Susan Reynolds, curator of the British Library's Czech and Slovak collections and the author of a new, critically acclaimed translation of Karel Jaromír Erben's Kytice. First published in 1853, this collection of poems, along with Mácha’s Máj and Němcová’s Babička, are the best loved and most widely read 19th century Czech classics.
Susan will be reading from her translation of Erben's masterpiece, accompanied by Kamila Drtilová reading in Czech. Afterwards there will be a discussion on Kytice's wider cultural impact. Jantar will launch its new hardback 'Special Czech Edition' of Kytice featuring Susan's translation, that evening. The 'Special Czech Edition' has a limited print run of 500 copies.
Reading starts at 7:00PM FREE ENTRY
Susan will be reading from her translation of Erben's masterpiece, accompanied by Kamila Drtilová reading in Czech. Afterwards there will be a discussion on Kytice's wider cultural impact. Jantar will launch its new hardback 'Special Czech Edition' of Kytice featuring Susan's translation, that evening. The 'Special Czech Edition' has a limited print run of 500 copies.
Reading starts at 7:00PM FREE ENTRY