Susanna Roth Prize 2022: Preparations for Everything

Elsa Aids: Preparations for Everything (Fra, 2020)

Preparations for Everything is a love story from a small country where life turns into a state of emergency, a war diary from the time of the ceasefire, a self-portrait focused on the immediate surroundings. Keywords: tabloid, children, collapse, love, boredom, porn, solitude, discounts, memories, remnants.

About the Author

Elsa Aids is a Czech writer, pseudonym. Born in the first half of the 1980s, he mainly lives in Prague, male, single, with two children. He works as a language editor and editor of a cultural magazine. He has published poetry collections The Trinity Finger (2011), Hatred (2014), The Book of Restrictions (2017) and the prose Preparations for Everything (2020).

Winning Translators

Bulgaria – Ana Ivajlova Stojkova (*2000)

Lives in Sofia but comes from the town of Svištov. From 2007 to 2015, she studied at Cvetana Radoslavova School and subsequently completed her secondary education with a sports profile in 2019. Since 2019, she has been studying Slavic philology, specifically Czech studies, at St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia. She is interested in languages, enjoys reading, engages in translations, and travels.

Croatia – Klara Pedišić (*1984)

She studied Czech and French at the University of Zagreb, later also studying economics at the same university. After completing her studies in Luxembourg, she undertook two translation internships at European institutions. These helped her secure a position as a translator at an international company in Budapest, where she worked on translations of official European Union documents, among other things. She currently lives at two addresses – during the summer in Croatia and the rest of the year in Bratislava, Slovakia. In Bratislava, she initially worked as a financial analyst and is now employed in market research, actively using several languages. In her free time, she engages with languages; she studies Italian, German, and Russian.

Japan – Mebae Fujii (*1996)

She comes from Japan and has been studying in the follow-up master's program in Czech Studies for Foreigners at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University since 2020. Since childhood, she has enjoyed reading foreign literature and has always been interested in European languages and cultures. After graduating from high school, she sought her academic specialization and studied Czech Studies at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS). During her studies, she spent a year in Olomouc, where she gained deeper knowledge of the Czech language and literature. She became fascinated by Czech book culture from both an artistic and a translation perspective, which is why she decided to continue her studies in the Czech Republic.

Lithuania – Simona Osipovaitė (*1993)

She was born in Lithuania. She studied applied linguistics at Vilnius University. She became interested in the Czech language after finishing high school when she went to work for a volunteer program in the Czech Republic in 2012. She returned to the Czech Republic in 2016 under the Erasmus program and in 2018 taught Lithuanian at Masaryk University in Brno. She worked for four years at a democratic school in Lithuania and is currently working as a freelance translator, editor, and proofreader. She is also interested in physical activities and alternative education.

Germany – Susanne Marlene Bierlmeier (*1992)

She was born in Regensburg. After graduating from high school, she trained as a bookseller and subsequently joined the European Voluntary Service in Plzeň, where she acted in the theatre group A BASTA! and began learning Czech. As part of her bachelor's studies, she studied linguistics and German as a foreign language at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and Masaryk University in Brno. Since 2014, she has been an active member of the theatre network Czech Republic and Bavaria Čojč. She completed a four-year program in theatre pedagogy with a focus on performance and international education. She currently works in a bookstore in Leipzig and is finishing her master's studies focusing on linguistics, cultural studies, and translation at Leipzig University. She has been translating from Czech since 2018.

Poland – Barbara Szot (*1984)

Originally from Gliwice, she currently lives in Olomouc. She studied Czech Studies and English Studies at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. She completed an Erasmus program at Charles University and studied at Palacký University in Olomouc as part of the CEEPUS program. In Prague, she first participated in an Irish language course, which she continued studying in Olomouc. In 2020, she participated in the Irish literary translation project Aistriú. She did not complete two doctoral programs and currently works as a QA (Quality Assistance) specialist.

Slovakia – Nikoleta Ziliziová (*1996)

She lives in Šaľa/Bratislava. She studied translation and interpreting at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava, combining English and Russian languages. During her studies, she collaborated on the translation of the book Tweeting with God and participated in organizing translation discussions. In professional translation, she specializes in civil engineering, engineering, and architecture. She worked on a construction PPP project as an internal translator and interpreter, collaborates with the architectural company BETWEEN s.r.o., and is currently engaged in pro bono interpreting for Ukrainian families and works at LANXESS CEE s.r.o. (administration).

Ukraine – Iryna Bunko (*1992)

She was born in a small town in western Ukraine. After high school, she studied history at Lviv National University. She successfully completed her five-year university studies in 2015. In 2016, she received a scholarship to the University of Warsaw, studying a master's program in Eastern European Studies with a specialization in Central Europe. While studying at this university, she began learning Czech. At the end of the course, she passed the certification exam at the B2 level. In addition to Czech, she also speaks Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, and English. In 2018, she defended her thesis "The Subcarpathian Issue in Czechoslovak Politics from 1919 to 1939," focusing on the formation of national consciousness among Subcarpathian Rusyns and the reaction to this process from the perspective of the then Czechoslovak government. She currently lives and works in Warsaw. She is interested in history, especially modern history of Central and Eastern Europe. She enjoys literature, ethnology, and studying Slavic languages.

United Kingdom – Neil McCallum (*1993)

Since 2014, he has been working as a professional translator focusing on Romance and Slavic languages. During this time, he has worked on literary translation projects from Russian and also for galleries in France and Russia, including the State Hermitage and MAMAC, as well as promoting translated literature and language education in the United Kingdom. Before returning to Scotland to complete his studies in Central and Eastern Europe with a specialization in the Czech Republic, he worked as an English teacher in China. After his studies, he headed to Plzeň, where, with the support of the Czech government, he studied at the University of West Bohemia. He intends to return to the Czech Republic to get to know it better.