Prague, April 5 (CTK) – Daniela Hodrova’s novel Tocite vety (Spiral Sentences), reflecting friendship and memory, won the 2016 Book of the Year and women dominated also in other categories of the Czech Magnesia Litera prestigious awards presented on Tuesday.
The main award carries 200,000 crowns for the author.
Women won most of the categories this year, including the best prose book and literary translation.
Men received the main awards only in the poetry category (Ladislav Zednik) and in children’s literature (Robin Kral).
The winning novel by Hodrova, 69, gives a sensitive testimony about a friendship of her autobiographic narrator with experimental poet and translator Bohumila Groegerova (1921-2014) and artist Adriena Simotova (1926-2014), which is accompanied by reflections on the creative process, writing of a literary text.
Groegerova alone won the Book of the Year award in 2009 for her long poem Rukopis (Manuscript).
The winner in the prose category is the novel Do tmy (Into Darkness) by Anna Bolava, which is a pseudonym of writer and critic Bohumila Adamova. She tells a story of a woman attempting to escape her past, which leads to her isolation and the loss of her ego.
Magnesia litera in the category new talent of the year was given to Blanka Jedlickova for Zeny na rozcesti (Women at the the Crossroads) about theatre and women around it in 1939-1945, during the Nazi occupation.
Last year, the category of the best blog was introduced. Its winner for 2016 is Tomas Princ with his blog Humans of Prague.
