Written between 1914 and 1915, during one of Franz Kafka’s creative outbursts, The Trial revolves around the struggle of the main protagonist, Josef K., who finds himself…
For many years, comics in the Czech Republic was regarded as a genre for children. To this day, most people will probably associate it with the Four-leaf Clover, a popular…
Translated into more than 30 languages, Too Loud a Solitude is perhaps the most famous of Bohumil Hrabal’s novels.
The Devil’s Workshop, a short novel written by the award-winning author Jáchym Topol in 2009, focuses on some of the darkest chapters of Europe’s history.
The idea for The Joke came to Milan Kundera after hearing of a girl jailed for stealing cemetery flowers. He imagined a life with sexuality and love tragically discrete.
Patrik Ouředník’s 2001 book Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century is one of the shortest and most fast paced histories of humanity's bloodiest century. A…
Bianca Bellová’s The Lake is a powerful archetypal story of a young boy who searches for his roots in a fictitious land, with references to a past Soviet occupation.
Bob and Bobek – the Rabbits from a Hat, The Tales of Moss and Fern and Maxipes Fík are cartoons classics that have delighted many generations of Czech children.
In the fourth episode of our series Masters of Czech Animated Film we present Jan Švankmajer, a Czech Surrealist artist, puppeteer, animator, and filmmaker.
The Little Mole cartoon character, created by Zdeněk Miler in 1957, has captivated generations of children the world over.
In the first episode of our new series Masters of Czech animated film we trace the origins of the eventual golden age of Czech animation.
Radka Denemarková is one of the most celebrated Czech contemporary writers. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages, winning numerous awards.
With more than 30 books and 1.5 million copies sold under his belt, Michal Viewegh is quite possibly the Czech Republic’s most popular contemporary author.
The Seven Churches, a Gothic murder mystery by Miloš Urban, has been described as one of the most haunting and terrifying thrillers to come out of Europe in years.
Jaroslav Seifert was one of the greatest Czech poets of the 20th century and is the only Czech Nobel Prize winner for literature.
In November 1989, Václav Havel was a dissident playwright whose works hadn't been staged in Czechoslovakia since the Soviet occupation. We look back at his literary legacy.
Ota Pavel’s collection of autobiographical short stories from rural Bohemia How I Came to Know Fish bears powerful testimony of the war seen through the eyes of a child.
Founded a year after the birth of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Masaryk University bears the name of the country’s co-founder and its first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk.
Jan Zrzavý was a painter, illustrator and scenographer, and a leading representative of the Czech avant-garde. His paintings now sell for millions of dollars at auction.
František Kupka was the first artist in the world to publicly exhibit abstract art and received a lot of criticism for it. But nowadays his paintings sell for millions.
Today's edition of The Czech Books You Must Read focuses on two representatives of contemporary Czech poetry, Petr Hruška and Milan Děžinský.
The Brewery Museum in Pilsen celebrates the birth of the country's most famous export article.
The National Technical Museum – one of the oldest museums of its type – was founded to document technological advancement both in the Czech lands and the wider world.
Kateřina Tučková’s Gerta centres on Gerta Schnirch, a young member of Brno’s German community who experiences extreme hardships in the immediate aftermath of the war.
In the Škoda Museum in Mladá Boleslav, just outside Prague, the car maker puts its rich history on display.
