Míla Fürstová Books

Kniha o životě a díle Míly Fürstové, významné české umělkyně žijící ve Velké Británii. Kniha plná nádherných uměleckých děl je retrospektivou dosavadní tvorby. Míla Fürstová se do podvědomí široké veřejnosti dostala zejména v roce 2014 vytvořením přebalu alba Ghost Stories britské hudební skupiny Coldplay. Její díla mají ve svých sbírkách nejen přední světové galerie, ale také například britská královna Alžběta II. Celosvětově uznávaný kurátor Grayson Perry umístil její monumentální grafiku „All the Rivers That Flow Through Me“ mezi nejvýznamnější současné umělce na legendární Summer Exhibition Royal Academy of Art. Česká veřejnost zná její dílo v podobě monumentální kompozice křídel pro firmu Mattoni.

Tato kniha byla vydána českým nakladatelstvím Twisted Spoon Press, které sídlí v Praze a vydává díla českých a slovanských autorů v anglickém jazyce. Oficiální anotace nakladatelství: Erben compiled and wrote A Bouquet based on his studies of Slavic folklore. First published in 1853, it is dotted with murder and mayhem : graves opening and the dead walking the earth, the animate becoming the inanimate and vice versa, ogres and monsters of lake and wood, human transformations reminiscent of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Written as ballads, Marcela Sulak's new translation perfectly captures their cadence and rhythm in an English that is fresh and energetic. Through the years A Bouquet has come to be regarded as a masterpiece and wellspring of inspiration to artists of all stripes, including Antonín Dvořák, who composed a series of symphonic poems to some of these tales. Of the many illustrators who have contributed to the various editions that have appeared over the past century and a half, Alén Diviš's artwork is generally considered the most powerful. This edition also includes Erben's own notes explaining the origins of many of these tales. Translated from Czech and introduced by Marcela Malek Sulak. Artwork by Alén Diviš.

Often compared to Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Poe, called Lautreamont's "elder brother" by the Czech Surrealists, Karel Hynek Mácha (1810-1836) was the greatest Czech Romantic poet, and arguably the most influential of any poet in the language. May, his epic masterpiece, was published in April 1836, just seven months before his death. Considered the "pearl" of Czech poetry, it is a tale of seduction, revenge, and patricide. A paean as well to nature, the beauty of its music and its innovative use of language, expertly captured in this new translation by Marcela Sulak, has ensured the poem's lasting popularity. Scorned at first by the national revivalists of the 19th century for being "un-Czech," Mácha was held up as a "national" poet by later generations, a fate which the interwar Czech avant-garde, who considered him a precursor, took it upon themselves to reverse.Unlike the other seminal 19th-century European poets, Mácha's work has been largely ignored in English translation. The present volume, the only available in English, provides the original Czech text in parallel and includes a series of illustrations by Jindřich Štyrský specifically created for the poem.

The Czech author Božena Němcová (1820-1862), born in Vienna, paints an entirely unsentimental portrait of the country habits and customs of Bohemia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and depicts the people she encountered during her childhood: teachers, maids, farm workers, millers, foresters, priests, to name but a few. The central character of this story, set in Eastern Bohemia, is a grandmother, full of simple wisdom, goodness and love, who personifies an ideal of maternal care. The Prošek family live in this country idyll but their father’s work means that he is compelled to spend a large part of the year in the imperial city of Vienna. Thus, their grandmother is brought home to look after the children and the property. This is the background against which the author unfolds the most important prose work in Czech literature and creates “one of the best female characters in world literature”.