David Vaughan

Comic books and graphic novels are rapidly becoming a popular and recognized form of Czech literature and they build on a tradition in this country that goes back well…

Ivan Klíma described the 2009 novel Three Faces of an Angel by Jiří Pehe as one of the most outstanding Czech novels since the fall of communism. The book is not only an…

It is not often that one book receives two major Czech literary awards within a few weeks, but that is just what happened at the end of last year in the case of Martin…

We are in Prague’s Jewish Ghetto at the end of the 17th century. A young boy dies under mysterious circumstances. Did he die of natural causes or was it murder? This real…

Every language has its own rhythms and melodies, and these influence the way we speak foreign languages too. However hard we try, we nearly always end up imposing the…

If you have ever used a computer translation program you will know what curious things machines can come up with, as they try to cope with the complexities and ambiguities…

Even if you have never read anything by the great German novelist Thomas Mann, you will almost certainly have come across Visconti’s film of his most famous novella, “…

The poet, playwright and novelist Irena Eliášová spent her early childhood in a Romany village in south-western Slovakia. The memory of this time has become the defining…

The White Carpathian Mountains, straddling the border of Moravia and Slovakia, are one of the most beautiful and rural parts of the Czech Republic. Towns are few and far…

At a crossroads in Europe, the Czech capital has always been an international city and has attracted writers from many parts of the world. But, despite the rich historical…