Jáchym Topol & Alex Zucker | Interview | A Sensitive Person

Celebrating the UK release of his sweeping new “picaresque romp of black humor and fantasy” (TLS), luminary writer Jáchym Topol and translator Alex Zucker discussed the award-winning novel A Sensitive Person. A Sensitive Person (Yale University Press 2023, published in Czech as Citlivý člověk in 2017) is a brutally funny, carnivalesque novel about love, death, and survival, from the Czech Republic’s greatest living author. Tab, an itinerant Czech actor, travels Europe on the theatre circuit with his partner, Soňa, and their two young sons, attending festivals and performing plays. Confronted with growing resentment toward foreigners, Tab decides to return home to the banks of the Sázava River, southeast of Prague. As soon as they arrive, Tab finds himself falsely accused of a terrible crime and forced to go on the run with his sons. Over the course of their journey, dodging authorities by car, foot, and raft, they encounter a motley cast of allies and enemies. The effects of Tab’s sudden reappearance and just-as-sudden disappearance ripple through the community, catalyzing a chaotic chain of events that reaches a final, raucous crescendo. Hailed as “A superb, mesmerizing novel, reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, set against the background of the permanent Russian threat to Central Europe”(Misha Glenny, BBC), A Sensitive Person is an unforgettable novel about discovering sparks of humanity even in the bleakest of places, in which love or the longing to find it lies around every bend. Jáchym Topol (b. 1962), poet, lyricist, journalist, and novelist, is the leading figure in Czech postmodern fiction since the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Even as his work reaps the highest official laurels, including the Ministry of Culture’s State Prize for Literature, it has continued to attract younger readers, drawn to Topol’s roots in 1970s and ’80s underground culture. His debut novel, City Sister Silver, was featured in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, and was the only work from after 1989 to be named among the Best 100 Czech Books of the 20th Century. The laudation on his winning the Vilenica International Literary Prize stated, “Like Hašek, Kafka and Hrabal, Jáchym Topol has left a permanent stamp on Central European literature.” He currently works as programme director at the Václav Havel Library, in Prague, featuring politically engaged authors and artists (Czech and non-Czech alike). Topol’s other works available in English, besides A Sensitive Person, are A Trip to the Train Station, City Sister Silver, Angel Station, Nightwork, Gargling With Tar, and The Devil’s Workshop. His work has been translated into over 25 languages. jachymtopol.cz Alex Zucker has translated novels by Jáchym Topol, Bianca Bellová, Petra Hůlová, J. R. Pick, Magdaléna Platzová, Tomáš Zmeškal, Josef Jedlička, Heda Margolius Kovály, Patrik Ouředník, and Miloslava Holubová. He has also Englished short stories, plays, subtitles, young adult and children’s books, song lyrics, essays, poems, philosophy, art history, and an opera. Alex is a past cochair of the Translation Committee at PEN America, and his collaborations with the Authors Guild in the United States have included the first national survey of working conditions for literary translators and the Guild’s first model contract for literary translation. alexjzucker.com More info & events on Czech Centre London website: https://london.czechcentres.cz/en/program Video recording & editing: Marek Bero #jachymtopol #alexzucker #booklaunch