Prague, I See a City...

Daniela Hodrová (b. 5 July 1946) is a prize-winning author and literary scholar of French, Russian and comparative literature.

She has written 9 novels, one ‘alternative guidebook’ (Prague, I See a City, Jantar 2011 and 2015) and several academic monographs on various aspects of the European novel, in particular the novel of initiation, as well as mythopoetics of the city. Her novel Spiral Sentences won the most prestigious Czech literary award Magnesia Litera in 2016. She was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize in 2012 and the (Czech) State award for Literature in 2011.

Her novels have been translated into 10 languages.

David Short graduated with a BA in Russian with French from the University of Birmingham in 1965 and spent 1966–72 in Prague studying, working, translating and having fun. He then taught Czech and Slovak at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London from 1973 to 2011. He has translated a wide range of literary and non-literary Czech texts including Prague. I see a city… by Daniela Hodrová and Bliss was it in Bohemia by Michal Viewegh, both published by Jantar. He has won awards both for translations and for his contribution to Czech and Slovak studies, notably in 2004 the Czech Minister of Culture’s Artis Bohemicae Amicus medal and the Medal of the Comenius University in Bratislava.