Daniela Hodrová (5 July 1946 – 30 August 2024) was a Czech writer and literary scholar.

Biography

Hodrová was born in

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

on 5 July 1946. She did postgraduate studies in French and

comparative literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

. In 1972–75, she worked as an editor of Slavonic literature in the Odeon publishing house. From 1975, she worked at the Institute of Czech Literature of the Academy of Sciences (prior to 1993 known as the Institute of Czech and World Literature of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences), where she was a Senior Researcher. Her novels typically incorporate topics from her work as a literary scholar, "especially the classification of novels into roman-realité and the roman-invention, or the pioneering theory about the meaning and forms of the initiation storyline in a work of literature." She is perhaps best known for a trilogy called ''Trýznivé město'' (''City of Torment''), they are distinctive "Prague novels, which aim to convey emblematically the

genius loci In classical Roman religion, a ''genius loci'' (: ''genii locorum'') was the protective spirit of a place. It was often depicted in religious iconography as a figure holding attributes such as a cornucopia, patera (libation bowl), or snake. Man ...

of this central European city, of whose history Hodrová highlights the tragic features." Some of her works have been translated into English, such as ''Prague, I See a City...'' (translated by David Short, 2011) and the trilogy ''City of Torment'' (translated by Véronique Firkusny and Elena Sokol, 2021), both published by Jantar Publishing. Hodrová died on 30 August 2024, at the age of 78.

Bibliography

* ''Podobojí'' (1991). ''A Kingdom of Souls'', trans. Véronique Firkusny and Elena Sokol (Jantar Publishing, 2015) or later as ''In Both Kinds'' (in ''City of Torment'') * ''Kukly'' (1991). ''Puppets'' * ''Théta'' (1991) * ''Město vidím...'' (1992). ''Prague, I See a City...'', trans. David Short (Jantar Publishing, 2011) * ''Perunův den'' (1994) * ''Ztracené děti'' (1997) * ''Trýznivé město'' (1999). ''City of Torment'', trans. Véronique Firkusny and Elena Sokol (Jantar Publishing, 2021). Compiles ''Podobojí'', ''Kukly'' and ''Théta''. * ''Komedie'' (2003) * ''Vyvolávání'' (2010) * ''Točité věty'' (2015) * ''Ta blízkost'' (2019) * ''Co přichází aneb Cesta na Kouzelný vrch'' (2024)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hodrova, Daniela 1946 births 2024 deaths Czech novelists 21st-century Czech women writers Writers from Prague Charles University alumni Magnesia Litera winners