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68 Publishers
68 Publishers, also called Sixty-Eight Publishers, Sixtyeight Publishers, or even Nakladatelství 68 ('nakladatelství' is Czech for 'publishing house'), was a publishing house formed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1971 by Czech expatriate Josef Škvorecký and his wife Zdena Salivarová. The purpose of 68 Publishers was to publish books by Czech and Slovak writers whose works were banned in communist Czechoslovakia. The name '68 Publishers' is in commemoration of the Prague Spring of 1968. Škvorecký and Salivarová began by publishing both Czech originals, and English translations, of Škvorecký's books. The first book, ''Tankový prapor'' (''The Republic of Whores'') was published in 1971 and was followed by others such as ''Prima sezóna'' (''The Swell Season''), '' Zbabělci'' (''The Cowards''), ''Konec nylonového věku'' (''End of the Nylon Age''). These were followed by the books of Czech and Slovak authors that were banned in Czechoslovakia, and therefore accessible onl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josef Škvorecký
Josef Škvorecký (; September 27, 1924 – January 3, 2012) was a Czech-Canadian writer and publisher. He spent half of his life in Canada, publishing and supporting banned Czech literature during the communist era. Škvorecký was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1980. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country. Škvorecký's fiction deals with several themes: the horrors of totalitarianism and repression, the expatriate experience, and the miracle of jazz. Life Born the son of a bank clerk in Náchod, Czechoslovakia, Škvorecký graduated in 1943 from the Reálné '' gymnasium'' in his native Náchod. He had a youthful love-affair with jazz and was an amateur tenor saxophone player in the period just prior to the Second World War, an experience he drew upon for his novella ''The Bass Saxophone'' (1967). For two years during the War he was a slave labourer in a Messerschmitt aircr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bohumil Hrabal
Bohumil Hrabal (; 28 March 1914 – 3 February 1997) was a Czech writer, often named among the best Czech writers of the 20th century. Early life Hrabal was born in Židenice (suburb of Brno) on 28 March 1914, in what was then the province of Moravia within Austria-Hungary, to an unmarried mother, Marie Božena Kiliánová (1894–1970). According to the organisers of a 2009 Hrabal exhibition in Brno, his biological father was probably Bohumil Blecha (1893–1970), a teacher's son a year older than Marie, who was her friend from the neighbourhood. Marie's parents opposed the idea of their daughter marrying Blecha, as he was about to serve in the Austro-Hungarian Army.“Vítová: Hrabal dostal šest pětek, a v Brně skončil”, Brněnský deník, 29 March 2009 World War I started four months after Hrabal's birth, and Blecha was sent to the Italian front, before being invalided out of service.Novinky.cz, 31 October 2004, reprinted from Právo Blecha's daughter, Drahomíra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book Publishing Companies Of Canada
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is '' codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being
''The Unbearable Lightness of Being'' ( cs, Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) is a 1984 novel by Milan Kundera, about two women, two men, a dog and their lives in the 1968 Prague Spring period of Czechoslovak history. Although written in 1982, the novel was not published until two years later, in a French translation (as ''L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être''). The original Czech text was published the following year. It was also translated to English from Czech by Michael Henry Heim and published in ''The New Yorkers March 19, 1984, issue under the "Fiction" section. Premise ''The Unbearable Lightness of Being'' takes place mainly in Prague in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It explores the artistic and intellectual life of Czech society from the Prague Spring of 1968 to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union and three other Warsaw Pact countries and its aftermath through the lives of two separate pairs of people and those around them. Characters *Tomáš: A Czech su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera (, ; born 1 April 1929) is a Czech writer who went into exile in France in 1975, becoming a naturalised French citizen in 1981. Kundera's Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, then conferred again in 2019. He "sees himself as a French writer and insists his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in book stores". Kundera's best-known work is ''The Unbearable Lightness of Being''. Prior to the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the communist régime in Czechoslovakia banned his books. He leads a low-profile life and rarely speaks to the media. He was thought to be a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was also a nominee for other awards. He was awarded the 1985 Jerusalem Prize, in 1987 the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and the 2000 Herder Prize. In 2021, he received the Golden Order of Merit from the president of Slovenia, Borut Pahor. Biography Kundera was born in 1929 at Purkyňova 6 (6 Purkyně Street) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karel Kryl
Karel Kryl (12 April 1944 – 3 March 1994) was an iconic Czechoslovak (Moravian born and Czech speaking) poet, singer-songwriter and author of many hit protest songs in which he identified and attacked the hypocrisy, stupidity and inhumanity of the Communist (and later also the post-communist) regime in his home country. The lyrics of Kryl's songs are highly poetic and sophisticated, with perfect rhyming and a frequent use of metaphors and historical allusions. The sparse sounds of his guitar served to underscore the natural flow of the lyrics themselves. Kryl has been compared with the young Bob Dylan, because of the complexity of his lyrics, his accompaniment by a single acoustic guitar, and his great popularity. Having lived for twenty years in forced exile, he was initially keen on the collapse of communism in his country, but very quickly he became bitterly and uncompromisingly critical of the new regime and its protagonists as well, including Václav Havel, and especiall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nobel Prize In Literature
) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , reward = 10 million SEK (2022) , website = , year2 = 2022 , holder_label = Currently held by , previous = 2021 , main = 2022 , next = 2023 The Nobel Prize in Literature (here meaning ''for'' literature) is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction" (original Swedish: ''den som inom litteraturen har producerat det utmärktaste i idealisk rigtning''). Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy, the award is based on an author's body of work as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jaroslav Seifert
Jaroslav Seifert (; 23 September 1901 – 10 January 1986) was a Czech writer, poet and journalist. Seifert was awarded the 1984 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his poetry which endowed with freshness, sensuality and rich inventiveness provides a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and versatility of man". Biography Born in Žižkov, a suburb of Prague in what was then part of Austria-Hungary, Seifert's first collection of poems was published in 1921. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), the editor of a number of communist newspapers and magazines – ''Rovnost'', ''Sršatec'', and ''Reflektor'' – and the employee of a communist publishing house. During the 1920s he was considered a leading representative of the Czechoslovak artistic avant-garde. He was one of the founders of the journal Devětsil. In March 1929, he and six other writers left the KSČ after signing a manifesto protesting against Bolshevized Stalinist-influenced tendencies in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erazim Kohák
Erazim Kohák (21 May 1933 – 8 February 2020) was a Czech philosopher and writer. His early education was in Prague. After communists took over Czechoslovakia in 1948, his family escaped to the United States. He died in February 2020 at the age of 86. Academic life Kohák was born in Prague in May 1933. He studied at Colgate University, earning a B.A. in 1954, and then studied philosophy, theology and religious studies at Yale University (M.A. in 1957, PhD in 1958). He also worked at Gustavus Adolphus College and Boston University (Professor in 1977). After the Velvet revolution in 1989, he returned to Czechoslovakia to become a professor at Charles University in Prague. Since 2006, he has been a senior research fellow in the Centre of Global Studies in the Institute of Philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Other activities He supported several non-governmental ecological organizations and was a member of the honorary board of Děti Země (Children o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Levy
Alan Levy (10 February 1932 – 2 April 2004) was an American author. Life Alan Levy was born in New York City in 1932 and educated at Brown and Columbia universities. In 1952 at Brown, he co-wrote an original Brownbrokers musical titled ''Anything Can Be Fixed'' with Gill Bach and Porter Woods. In addition, he worked seven years as a reporter for the ''Louisville Courier-Journal'' in Kentucky. Later on, he spent seven years in New York as journalist writing for ''Life'' magazine, ''The Saturday Evening Post'', ''The New York Times'' and others. Among first personalities he interviewed were W. H. Auden, the Beatles, Fidel Castro, Graham Greene, Václav Havel, Sophia Loren, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Nixon and Ezra Pound. In 1967, Alan Levy moved to Prague with his family, to collaborate on an American version of a musical by Jiří Šlitr and Jiří Suchý. Shortly after, he covered the Prague Spring and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and chro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jan Křesadlo
Václav Jaroslav Karel Pinkava (; 9 December 1926 – 13 August 1995), better known by his pen name Jan Křesadlo (), was a Czech psychologist who was also a prizewinning novelist and poet. An anti-communist, Pinkava emigrated to Britain with his wife and four children following the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet-led armies of the Warsaw pact. He worked as a clinical psychologist until his early retirement in 1982, when he turned to full-time writing. His first novel "Mrchopěvci" (GraveLarks) was published by Josef Škvorecký's emigre publishing house 68 Publishers, and earned the 1984 Egon Hostovský prize. He chose his pseudonym (which means firesteel) partly because it contains the uniquely Czech sound '' ř''; in addition, he was fond of creating more pseudonyms such as Jake Rolands (an anagram), J. K. Klement (after his grandfather, for translations into English), Juraj Hron (for his Slovak-Moravian writings), Ferdinand Lučovický z Lučovic a na Suchým ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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