Jáchym Topol

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Jáchym Topol (2010)

Jáchym Topol (born August 4, 1962 in Prague ) is a Czech writer.

Life

Jáchym Topol at the Leipzig Book Fair 2019

Topol is the son of the playwright and Shakespeare translator Josef Topol . He dropped out of middle school in 1982 and worked as a warehouse worker, stoker and coal carrier until 1986. He then received a disability pension until 1990.

From the late 1970s Topol was a member of the literary and musical underground movement in Prague. He wrote lyrics for the rock band Psí vojáci and has participated in samizdat editions since 1980 . In 1985 he founded the underground magazine Revolver Revue . Since 1989 he has worked as a journalist for various magazines, including the political weekly Respekt, which he founded . Since 2009 he has been editor of the daily Lidové noviny . He lives in Prague with his wife and two daughters.

plant

In 1988 his first volume of poetry, Miluji tě k zbláznění ( I love you to the point of madness ), was published. After further volumes of poetry, including V úterý bude válka ( There will be war on Tuesday ), he concentrated on his narrative work: in 1994 his first novel Sestra (Eng .: The Sister , 1998) was published. This is followed by Anděl (1995 - German: Engel EXIT , 1997), Noční práce (2001 - German: night work , 2003) and Kloktat dehet (2005 - German: circus zone , 2007). The volume of short stories Supermarket sovětských hrdinů (2007) brings together six texts written by the author since 1993; including dramatic works, prose and a script. In 2009 the novel Chladnou zemí ( Through a Cold Land ) was published. In the same year, Deutschlandradio Kultur produced a nearly 3-hour radio play version “Durch kalte Land” in two one-and-a-half-hour parts under the direction of Martin Engler .

In 2017 the 500-page novel Citlivý člověk came out, for which he was awarded the Czech State Prize for Literature in the same year . Ironically, Topol's novel A Sensitive Man does not feature a sensitive protagonist, rather the author sends a family of four actors in a caravan on a "tour de force" through a crisis mode of Europe to various European theater festivals abroad. The scenery and characters in his novel "proliferate into the mythical ". Thanks to the translation by Eva Profousová, there is a lot of humor and laughter from the text. The author "swirls" the historical trauma of his homeland, the Czech Republic, through his novel.

Transfers into German

  • K Vodojemu 24 - Between church and yesterday - poems, bilingual. Publishing house C. Weihermüller, Leverkusen 1996.
  • Tady to znám - I know this here - poems, bilingual. Edition Galrev 45, Galrev-Verlag, Berlin 1996, ISBN 978-3-910161-70-2 .
  • Engel EXIT - novel, 205 p., From the Czech. by Peter Sacher, Volk und Welt, Berlin 1997, ISBN 978-3-353-01060-5 .
  • Die Sister - Roman, 650 p., (Original: Sestra), from the Czech by Eva Profousová and Beate Smandek, Volk und Welt, Berlin 1998; New edition by Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-518-45656-9 .
  • Night work - novel. 313 p., (Original: Noční práce), from the Czech by Eva Profousová and Beate Smandek, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 2003, ISBN 978-3-518-41477-4 .
  • Zirkuszone - Roman, 316 p., (Original: Kloktat dehet), from the Czech by Milena Oda and Andreas Tretner, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-41887-1 .
  • The Devil's Workshop - novel, 200 p., (Original: Chladnou zemí), from the Czech by Eva Profousová; Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-518-42144-4 .
  • A Sensitive Person - Novel, 486 pages, (Original: Citlivý člověk), from the Czech by Eva Profousová, Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin, 2019, ISBN 978-3-518-42864-1 .

Web links

Commons : Jáchym Topol  - collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Radio play about doing business with memory culture: “Durch kalte Landen” (2/2) , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, accessed May 31, 2020
  2. ↑ Jörg Plath: As long as the state of Europe encourages such works of art, it is not lost - Jáchym Topol's novel “Ein sinnsamer Mensch” , a review in the NZZ , published and accessed June 1, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Topol, Jáchym
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech writer
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague