Results by title

3 books match the query 'Clarke, Melvyn'

cover of A Nation of Bookworms?: Czechs as Readers

A Nation of Bookworms?

Czechs as Readers

Jirí Trávnícek

Karolinum Press, 2021

Nation of Bookworms takes an in-depth look at the reading culture of the Czech Republic--the country with the highest number of libraries per capita worldwide. Drawing on studies and oral interviews of Czech readers conducted by the National Library of the Czech Republic and the Institute of Czech Literature between 2007 and 2018, the book presents intriguing new research on Czech readership and society. Jiří Trávníček deftly sifts through hard data and first-person reportage, illuminating the myriad components that make up reading culture, such as print-reading, screen-reading, libraries, book sales, the social lives of readers, time spent reading, and reading preferences. Trávníček also takes a global look at literary love, exploring the parallels between the reading cultures of other countries and the Czechs’ unique fervor for the written word. Nation of Bookworms is essential reading for bibliophiles on every continent.
 
[more]
cover of Crossroads of Imagination: Czech Fantastic Literature 1831–1945

Crossroads of Imagination

Czech Fantastic Literature 1831–1945

Edited by Carleton Bulkin

Karolinum Press, 2026

The first anthology of early Czech fantastic writing in translation.

Crossroads of Imagination is a rare English-language study of modern science fiction’s precursors beyond the U.S. and Britain. Many translated for the first time, these thirty texts reflect a rich Euro-Atlantic tradition from the Romantic age to World War II. Authors include Jakub Arbes, Karel Čapek, Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic, Ladislav Klíma, Jiří Mordechai Langer, Jan Neruda, Emilie Procházková, Jan Weiss, and Julius Zeyer. The anthology highlights women’s, Jewish, and queer voices.

Prefaces to each selection uncover how new ideas and technologies shaped the European fantastic—positivism, mistrust of elites, pacifism, spiritism, and xenophobia, alongside expansions in communications, transportation, electrification, and technical education. Comparative essays and annotations look beyond “major” literatures and emphasize those of East-Central Europe. Archival images enliven this collection. General and genre readers alike will discover new stories and authors, as well as a fantastic tradition shared across Europe and North America before the advent of modern science fiction.

[more]
cover of Samizdat Past+Present

Samizdat Past+Present

Edited by Tomáš Glanc

Karolinum Press, 2019

Much of what we now consider the canon of twentieth-century Czech literature—the work of authors like Bohumil Hrabal, Ludvík Vaculík, and Jáchym Topol, among many others—has, in fact, just recently become widely available to readers. Long published only in censored form or in secret among political dissidents, this body of underground literature is collectively known as samizdat. Samizdat Past and Present provides an expert introduction to these writings and their history, offering insight into both the current wave of literary rediscovery and translation and contemporary debates over censorship. In a diverse array of chapters, Tomáš Glanc gathers together texts from representative figures of Czech samizdat and underground culture of the 1960s to ’80s and provides a useful comparison of Czech, Polish, and Russian samizdat. From literary historians to former samizdat publishers and writers with firsthand experience of communist censorship, secret police, fake trials, and imprisonment, the authors of Samizdat Past and Present illuminate the complexities of a literature written under censorship and the struggle for freedom of thought in a totalitarian regime.
[more]