Kateřina Tučková for Ukraine

"THE AUTHORS’ READING MONTH" 

In the past few years, I have visited Ukraine several times. In 2014, I took part in the international book festival Bookforum in Lviv which I remember fondly as I was given a very warm welcome from the highly professional team of organisers as well as readers. Another occasion that I like to recall was visiting the beautiful city of Lviv again during the Authors‘ Reading Month literary festival. I visited local museums and galleries, tasted shashlik, vareniki and of course Ukranian borscht and I met fellow authors (not just Ukrainian, but Czech and Slovak, too) at the Dzyga Club which hosted the readings.  

A very important and pleasant meeting was the one with the writer Oksana Zabuzhko, whose publishing house Komora published my novel The Zitkova Goddessess. I really appreciate the invitation and care I received from the organisers as well as the Czech Centre Kyiv and I also appreciate the tremendous amount of work dedicated to my visit. The Czech Centre Kyiv team has done an exceptional job in recent years, strengthening the mutual Czech-Ukrainian relations for which I’d like to thank all its members headed by the Director Lucie Řehoříková.  

I’m excited about the upcoming anthology of short stories which will include, among others, a translation of my short story The Life and Work of Baroness Mautnic.  

I hope that the Czech Centre will continue to succeed in implementing similar projects to further strengthen Czech-Ukrainian cultural cooperation and mutual awareness of our countries. Fingers crossed! 

Lvov 2015