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Hosted by the UCLA Library, Center for European and Russian Studies, Department of Slavic, East European & Eurasian Languages & Cultures and Consulate General of the Czech Republic in Los Angeles.
Leading Czech novelist Martin Vopěnka reflected on how growing up in communist Europe, writers found their voices. What can we learn from their fictional worlds as we face our own troubled times? As he launched his new novel, My Brother, the Messiah Martin Vopěnka led us into the mindset of current Slavic writing.
Speaker
The Jewish-Czech author Martin Vopěnka is one of the leading voices in world literature, "reminiscent of both Kafka and Kundera" (Choice). Martin’s 1989 debut Kameny z hor (Rocks from the Mountains) recorded memories and emotions from a journey across the Romanian Carpathians. His novels and travel writing have continued to deliver a deep and intense exploration of our modern world. In 2016 his Nová Planeta (New Planet) won the country’s premier Golden Ribbon Award. Martin heads the Association of Czech Booksellers and Publishers and owns Práh publishing house.
Moderator
Martin Goodman’s debut novel On Bended Knees, shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, heralded a major theme of his writing: the aftermath of wars. His nonfiction picked up the theme when his biography of the scientist who worked to counter WW1 gas attacks, Suffer & Survive, won First Prize, Basis of Medicine in the BMA Book Awards. In Client Earth, which won the Jury’s Choice Business Book of the Year Award 2018, and the Green Book Award from Santa Monica Libraries, he told the story of ecolawyers who battle to rescue the planet from human destruction. He is an Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Hull.