Susanna Roth Prize 2025: Lover/Fighter
11th edition the competition worked with an excerpt from Kristina Hamplová's book Lover/Fighter (Dokořán, 2024), a prose debut that received nominations for the Magnesia Litera award and the Literary Critique Award. The competition was announced in a total of 21 countries within the ČC network and selected diplomatic missions , specifically in Bulgaria, Egypt, Croatia, Italy, Japan, Poland, Romania, North Macedonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Republic of Serbia, Ukraine, Taiwan, and Vietnam, as well as for shared language areas - German-speaking collectively for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, Francophone for Belgium and France, and Anglophone for Great Britain and the USA, which newly joined the project, along with Taiwan.
A total of 87 translators submitted competition texts. The evaluation of the translations was facilitated by local expert juries established for each participating country or language area. Ultimately, the laureates were not announced in Italy, North Macedonia, and Vietnam.
For the laureates, a composed programme was prepared in the Czech Republic, including networking, translation seminars, lectures, and cultural events. During the Prague part of the stay, a new theme on the use of AI in translation practice was opened, and there was also a meeting with the author of the text, Kristina Hamplová, who further participated in a translation seminar led by renowned translator Blanka Stárková. A follow-up multi-day programme in Liberec took place under the brand of the Bohemistic Seminar organized from 14th to 18th July 2025 by the Moravian Provincial Library.
About the author
Kristina Hamplová (* 1997) comes from a small town near Prague. She teaches at a high school, contributes articles about music to various media, organizes against coal barons, and hosts the pop culture podcast Hitparáda Eso. Lover/Fighter is her literary debut. Kristina Hamplová's work has been most significantly influenced by the books of Roberto Bolaño and Kurt Vonnegut.
Blue meat, clouds of violence, one quite ordinary girl, and four frantic episodes of her life in an unforgiving world that may await us. In 2014, teenage girls hold a hunt in the Brdy forest. Five years later, a clash between child gangs and skaters on Letná Plain turns into perhaps the largest street fight in the city's history. In 2023, a romantic relationship between two girls slowly transforms into a duel to the death. And finally, in 2031, the heroine battles thirsty animals in a parched city. Lover/Fighter not only follows the history of the spread of a new, unpredictable substance derived from parrot meat but primarily tells a story about childhood and youth in a world where people relentlessly go for each other's throats.
Winning translators
Bulgaria
Vasya Nikolaeva Brejchová (*1985)
She was born in Shumen. She studied psychology and Bohemistics at Sofia University. In 2012, she completed her master's degree in Labour Markets and Human Resource Development. She first came to the Czech Republic in 2009 as part of an intergovernmental study programme, and a year later, she attended the Summer School of Slavic Studies at Palacký University in Olomouc. In the academic year 2010/2011, she studied Czech for foreigners at Charles University as part of the Erasmus programme. Since 2012, she has lived in the Czech Republic and has worked in HR. She currently resides in Prague and is on maternity leave. She is the mother of three children. In her free time, she enjoys painting or reading contemporary Czech literature.
Egypt
Merna Ahmed Sayed Abdelhady (*2004)
A third-year student of Czech language at the Faculty of Languages. She chose Czech out of a desire to better understand Czech culture and literature. She soon discovered that it is a rich language and that the Czech Republic is a beautiful and inspiring country. She enjoys reading and writing. She publishes online articles in an effort to inspire young people to read and take an interest in the language, which she also tries to write in Czech. Her love for reading led her to volunteer at the Knihovna Misr, where she participated in organizing cultural events and motivating children and young people to read. Additionally, she is involved in voice-over and dubbing, primarily in Czech, which helps her improve her pronunciation and natural expression in the language.
France
Alessandra Vermander (*1994)
She was born and raised in northern France with a Czech mother and a French father. She applied her passion for foreign languages at Paris-Sorbonne University, where she improved her knowledge of Czech, German, English, and Russian while studying foreign languages applied in international business and Czech literature. She currently lives in Prague and works in human resources.
Croatia
Nives Ratković (*1999)
A master's student of Bohemistics and literary comparatistics at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb. She is interested in Czech literature as well as film. From 2022 to 2024, she participated in organizing three Bohemistic student conferences and is a founding member of the Club of Bohemistics Students ŘÍP. She completed scholarship stays in Olomouc and Prague. She is also involved in the DIGEOCAT & Lib project. As part of a translation seminar led by Prof. Matija Ivačić, she contributed to the publication of translations of the prose of Jaroslav Hašek. During her studies, she also worked on projects under the Erasmus+ programme, where she provided administrative and organizational support.
Japan
Kokoro Yamaguchi (*1997)
After graduating from a Japanese university in 2020, he began studying Czech in a preparatory course organized by the Institute of Language and Professional Preparation, where he intensively focused on Czech and subjects taught in Czech. This experience helped him not only to master the language but also to familiarize himself with the Czech academic environment. After completing the course, he continued at Charles University, where he focused on the study of Central Europe and dedicated himself to Hungarian literature and history. This study provided him with a solid foundation in the cultural and literary knowledge of the region. He then spent two years in Hungary, where he focused on the Hungarian language and culture. He is currently continuing his studies in a translation course focused on Hungarian literature and its translation into Japanese.
Poland
Karol Oleksy (*1998)
A graduate of Bohemistics at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He began studying this field during his second year of biomedical engineering studies because he couldn't shake off his interest in Czech. In the meantime, he also became interested in Czech culture and music. He is scientifically interested in inclusivity in language. In his bachelor's thesis, he compared the language of non-binary individuals in Poland and the Czech Republic, and in his master's thesis, he analyzed parliamentary discourse on same-sex couples. He has been fascinated by languages since childhood and has attempted to master seven so far. In his free time, when it is not too cold, he rollerblades. He works in a user support team at an international company.
Austria
Karolina Heidinger (*1995)
She was born into a Slovak family in Vienna, where she developed a relationship with Czech at the J. A. Komenský primary school. Thus, her life soon moved across the borders of languages, countries, and identities. She subsequently studied Japanese studies, Slavic studies, and translation studies. After various stays in France, Luxembourg, Japan, and Slovakia, she returned to Vienna and primarily translates technical texts. She is fascinated by translation in a broader sense - between different cultures, between science and laypeople, between ways of understanding the world.
Romania
Miruna Mocanu (*2002)
She was born in Brăila and grew up in Greci, a village in Tulcea at the foot of the oldest mountains in Europe. She attended high school in Greci and then studied philology at Grigore Moisil High School in Tulcea. In 2024, she graduated from the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, where she studied Czech and English. She is now a student in the master's programme of Slavic Cultural Studies. In 2022, she studied online Latvian for one semester at the University of Stockholm. She is very interested in foreign languages and literature. She is a curious person and wants to engage in traveling and discovering the cultures of many countries. She would like to become a translator or work in diplomacy.
Slovakia
Martin Jakubek (*1992)
He comes from Central Považie, studied Romance philology and general linguistics in Brno. Since childhood, he has been passionately interested in foreign languages and cultures, and thanks to his studies at the Faculty of Arts, he also encountered less studied languages such as Bulgarian and Norwegian. However, he dedicates most of his time to Romanian, which he also teaches at a language school. During his studies of Portuguese, he also focused on translation and won the Hieronymitae Pragenses translation competition and the 9th edition of the Artistic Translation of Lusophone Literature competition in Slovakia. After his studies, he completed an internship at European institutions in Brussels and now works in public administration.
Slovenia
Aleš Belšak (*2001)
He comes from the town of Domžale and lives in Ljubljana, where he attended high school and first got involved in cultural activities related to writing. At the University of Ljubljana, he has been studying Bohemistics and Slovenistics since 2020 and has been working as the main language editor at Radio Študent since the beginning of his studies, where he also occasionally prepares broadcasts. He encountered translation during his studies and in the project of translating letters from Alice G. Masaryková to the Slovenian architect Josef Plečnik, and since 2024 in the European project CELA - Connecting Emerging Literary Artists. He enjoys reading, watching films, going into nature, and attending parties.
Serbia
Ana Arsić (*1997)
In 2016, she graduated from the Philological Gymnasium and already during her studies successfully participated in several competitions in Serbian, English, and literature. In 2020, she completed her studies in general linguistics at the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade, and two years later, she finished her master's studies there. She briefly worked at a private school as a teacher of Serbian for foreigners. Currently, she works at the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade in the Department of General Linguistics as an assistant in several specialized subjects. She enjoys learning foreign languages and speaks English, Russian, and Spanish in addition to Serbian. She is currently attending a Czech course at the Czech Centre in Belgrade, where she collaborates primarily as a translator-volunteer.
Taiwan
Kai-Che Shih (*1985)
An expert in international trade and a manager with over fifteen years of experience in export and distribution. He studied Slavic studies at National Chengchi University and completed the ICDF programme during his studies. From 2006 to 2008, he worked as a Chinese teacher at the Catholic Gymnasium in Třebíč. During his study stay at Masaryk University in Brno, he became more acquainted with Czech culture. After completing his studies, he worked as an international sales representative in various sectors. He has worked in Taiwan, China, and Australia. After ten years of working abroad, he found employment in 2017 at a Czech company in Prague and is now the director of the Prague branch of a Taiwanese company focused on distributing premium Taiwanese whisky and coffee throughout Europe.
Ukraine
Alina Molčanová (*2004)
A student at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, majoring in Czech language and literature, translation. She has always had a talent for languages, and she became interested in the Czech Republic while still in high school. That is why she chose this field and has been studying Czech culture and language for the fourth year now. In her scientific work, she most often focuses on the lexical aspects of translation. Currently, translation is more of a hobby for her, but in the future, she would like to pursue it professionally. In her free time, she enjoys reading, birdwatching, and various forms of creativity.
USA
Bruce Bybee (*1999)
A Czech-American originally from Prague living in New York. He completed his bachelor's degree at Brown University in Modern Culture and Media and further studied film production at FAMU International in Prague. Professionally, he works in PR, marketing, and production with a focus on culture and the arts. He is passionate about photography, translation, and film - sharing human stories through innovative means of communication.
