This Zoom event will introduce Agnesa Kalinova (1924-2014) - a Slovak-Jewish journalist, film critic and translator. Agnesa's fascinating story has been captured in Mojich sedem zivotov, a book-length conversation conducted by the Slovak playwright, writer and social activist Jana Juráňová , which was published by the feminist publishing house ASPEKT in 2012. Translated into Czech, German and Hungarian, this captivating narrative will soon be available in English as well.
My Seven Lives is published by Purdue University Press on 15 October 2021. In our zoom program, Agnesa's daughter, Julia Sherwood (who has translated the book into English with her husband Peter), will join the conversation from London and the book’s co-author and Agnesa's interlocutor Jana JJuráňová will speak from Bratislava. They will be interviewed by Peter Brod, Agnesa's former colleague from RFE, who now lives in Prague.
Agnesa Kalinova's fate was determined by many dramatic turns of the 20th century. Born in eastern Slovakia in 1924, her youth was interrupted by the Second World War and by the Nazi persecution that eventually reached her Jewish family. She narrowly escaped deportation to an extermination camp, survived in hiding in Budapest and returned to Czechoslovakia, her re-born country, with hopes of a better and just future for all. She married a fellow survivor with whom she participated in the cultural life of the Slovak capital and experienced all the ups and downs of communist rule in the years following her country's inclusion into Stalin's empire after 1948. Twenty years later, their hopes for a more liberal regime were crushed by the Soviet-led invasion into Czechoslovakia. Gustav Husak - an acquaintance of Agnesa and of her husband Ladislav - who became leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia under Moscow's auspices, reimposed a harsh regime and did not hesitate to have them incarcerated for alleged political crimes, although only a few years before they had shared many views about the necessity of a reform of the system of government in the country. Released from prison after numerous protests on their behalf from abroad, the Kalinas left the country with their daughter Julia and settled in Munich where Agnesa became one of the star commentators at the Czechoslovak desk of Radio Free Europe, the influential US-sponsored station in Munich which broadcast in many East European languages. She was one of the lucky exile journalists who witnessed the return of liberty to her homeland in late 1989. Agnesa died after a very active retirement at ninety.
Julia Sherwood was born and grew up in Bratislava, then Czechoslovakia. After the family emigrated to Germany in 1978, Julia studied English and Slavonic languages and literature at universities in Cologne, London and Munich. In 1984 she settled in the UK, where she spent more than 20 years working for Amnesty International. She travelled widely in Eastern and Central Europe and the former USSR following the changes in 1989, deepening her knowledge of the languages and literatures of the region. While living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (2007-2014), she started working as a freelance translator from English, Czech, Slovak, German, Polish and Russian into Slovak, and jointly with her husband, into English. Their most recent book-length translation is Hana (by Alena Mornstajnova), translated from Czech and published in October 2020.
Julia Sherwood lives in London and serves as editor-at-large for Asymptote, the online journal for literary translation, regularly reporting on the literary scene in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland. Since 2011 she administers the Facebook group Slovak Literature in English Translation and in the autumn of 2019, she organized Raising the Velvet Curtain, a series of events promoting Slovak literature and culture in the UK. This included launching a website, SlovakLiterature.Com, which she curates jointly with Magdalena Mullek. Since April 2020 she has hosted LitCast Slovakia, a series of fortnightly interviews on Slovak literature for the Information Centre on Literature in Bratislava. In 2019 she was awarded the Pavol Orszagh Hviezdoslav prize for translating and promoting Slovak literature in the English-speaking world.
Jana Juráňová (1957) completed her university studies in English and Russian in 1980. Later she worked as the literary advisor for a theater in Trnava, Slovakia, as an editor with the literary magazine Slovenske pohlady, and as freelance contributor to Radio Free Europe. In 1993 she co-founded the feminist educational and publication project ASPEKT, of which she is still a coordinator, as well as editor of ASPEKT publications (Aspekt journal in 1993 – 2004, as well as many books published by ASPEKT). She has translated over 20 books from English, including Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf, Gender Trouble by Judith Butler, Trauma and Recovery by Judith L. Herman as well as works by Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson, Alexander McCall Smith, Ann Funder and others.
She is a playwright and an author of books for children, although her main focus is prose: short stories, novellas and novels, with the latest, the novel Nanichodnica (The Wretch), published in 2020. Some of her books have been translated into Hungarian, Czech, German, French and English and she has three times been nominated for Slovakia’s most prestigious literary award, Anasoft Litera. For My Seven Lives both authors were awarded the Egon Erwin Kisch prize in Prague. In 2018 Jana Juráňová (received a state prize for her literary activities and the promotion of human rights and democracy from the President of the Slovak Republic.
Peter Brod was born in Prague in 1951 and, together with his parents, he moved to Bavaria in 1969. After graduating from secondary school in Munich, he studied political science, East and Southeast European history and journalism at the University of Munich where he gained his M.A. in 1977. He also studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science and at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA). Between 1980 and 1987 he held various positions with BBC radio and television in London. Later he worked for Radio Free Europe until 1993, first serving in various posts in Munich and in 1990 - 1992 as the station´s first permanent correspondent and bureau chief in Prague. In 1993, Brod joined the staff of the Suddeutsche Zeitung in Munich and left the paper in 1996. After a two-year stint as a freelance journalist in Munich, he returned to the daily as its Prague correspondent.
In 2000, Brod rejoined the BBC and was in charge of its Prague bureau. Since 2006, he has been freelancing in Prague. His activities have included presenting the program Historical Magazine on Czech public TV´s news and current affairs station CT24. He regularly chairs debates on contemporary and historical topics at the Jewish Museum´s Department of Education and Culture. Brod is a member of the boards of the Czech-German Future Fund and of the Foundation of the Prague Jewish Community.
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The lecture will be streamed on ZOOM. RSVP through Eventbrite to receive a Zoom link. It will be recorded and available on YouTube.
The event is a part of lecture series Literature by and about Czech and Slovak Jews organized by the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews and Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, New York Chapter, with support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association and the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic in New York.
