To the sea
E-book, Czech
To the sea
Petra Soukupová's debut awarded with the Jiří Orten Prize
Petra Soukupová's prose is quite out of the context of contemporary Czech literature. At the centre of the author's narrative is the life story of several characters: ordinary people formally connected by family relations, but humanly very distant from each other. Their stories intersect fully and authentically only once: on a more or less random holiday trip to the seaside.
In form and idea, this prose refers to Virginia Woolf and her - now classic - prose To the Lighthouse. But this is not a mock formal exercise: from the author's testimony one can read (considering her age) a surprisingly intimate experience of the disintegration of interpersonal relationships and the impossibility of full-fledged communication even among the closest ones.
They wrote about the book:
I like the real life stories of people, no fairy tale, in life good and bad things happen. There are no dull pages and the plot flows furiously.
- reviews on databazeknih.cz
Once you get used to the distinctive writing style, you can't tear yourself away. Sad in places, yet a very nice read. After a long time I reached for a Czech author and I was not disappointed again.
- reviews on databazeknih.cz
Petra Soukupová
Petra Soukupová (1982) studied screenwriting and dramaturgy at FAMU. She worked as a writer for the successful show Comeback. For her debut K moři (To the Sea) she won the Jiří Orten Prize, was nominated for the Josef Škvorecký Prize and the Magnesia Litera Award. For her screenplay for the short story Na krátko she won third place in the Sazka Prize for an unrealised screenplay and finished her studies at FAMU with it. Her second book, a triptych of short stories, Zmizet, was also nominated for the Josef Škvorecký Award and in 2010 won the main Magnesia Litera Book of the Year Award.
Specifications
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