Jantar Publishing Ltd – förlag

Poetry from the front lines of the Ukrainian-Russian war

Yaryna Chornohuz is an award-winning 'soldier-poet' from Ukraine. Dasein, which has two meanings in German: 'Existence' and 'Exisiting' reflects on the poet's life on the Front Line of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Ukrainian Armed Forces veteran and poet, Arthur Dron, offers a series of very personal essays reflecting on his time on the frontline of the Russo-Ukrainian war, his comrades-in-arms, and his faith. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, always compelling.

The reader arrives in Adam Bodor's world, the periphery of civilization, at the break of dawn. Adam, the foster son of Brigadier Anatol Korkodus is waiting at the dilapidated station for a boy who is arriving from a reformatory.Soon afterwards, Korkodus is arrested for unfathomable reasons. Yet this decaying and sinister world is not devoid of a certain joie de vivre: people eat gourmet dishes, point out their interlocutor's hidden motives with incredibly dark humor and enjoy the region's stunning natural beauty.

Kyice is one of the foundation texts of the modern Czech literary canon. It inspired the composer, Antonin Dvorak, to write his famous tone poems. The collection has inspired countless other musical compositions, artworks, TV and movie adaptations

Prague, I see a city...is a novel of quest, in which the heroine abandons the material world of everyday society and linear history, perceiving it as false, temporary and distracting, and journeys in search of her true identity. Suffused with the atmosphere immediately following the end of the Communist regime, Hodrova's novel is a conscious addition to the tradition of Prague literary texts by, for example, Karel Hynek Macha, Jakub Arbes, Gustav Meyrink, and Franz Kafka, who present the city as a hostile living creature, or as a labyrinthine place of magic and mystery, in which the individual human being may easily get lost. Translated by David Short.

Translated by David ShortForeword by Rajendra ChitinsBurying the Season is an affectionate, multi-layered account of small town life in central Europe beginning in the early 1930s and ending in the 21st Century. Adapting scenes from Fellini’s Amarcord, Bajaja’s meandering narrative weaves humour, tragedy and historical events into a series of compelling nostalgic anecdotes.The ex-King of Bulgaria, a future president with the unfortunate name Goose, strange visitors and eccentric locals are just a few of the peculiar, but very human, characters drawn by the author experiencing the wonder and disillusionment of their everyday lives.Zlín, Bajaja’s hometown, with its Bauhaus inspired architecture, built by its major employer Baťa Shoes, feature prominently. Friends and family walk, skate, swim, quarrel, love and fall into the local river Dřevnice; disappearing and re-appearing, surviving changing times while their children play Swallows and Amazons. As an essay in remembering, it offers hope.

A foul-mouthed Prague prostitute muses on her profession, aging and the nature of materialism as imagined in her own reality TV series. In an unvarnished mixture of vulgar and poetic language, the episodes combine the mundane with fetishism, violence and dark humour.

Tales of desire, delirium and decadence from fin-de-siecle Prague. Short stories written by Julius Zeyer, Bozena Benesova, Milos Marten, Arthur Breisky, Jiri Karasek ze Lvovic, Frantisek Gellner and Richard Weiner

International diplomacy has stopped working. A new breed of authoritarian ruler has emerged, contemptuous of the rules of diplomacy and collective security, and willing to lie and bully to build power and influence. Europe’s democracies are confused and defensive. It is 1938 and Germany is putting pressure on Czechoslovakia.

A drunken teacher dreams up a hairbrained scheme to dig a tunnel from Ukraine to Hungary to force the EU to grant Ukraine admission by smuggling its entire population into a member country. Hilarity inevitably ensues, along with danger, when Tys, the would-be 'Moses of Ukraine', recruits a gang of local smugglers, including a latter-day Icarus determined to fly over the border and a femme fatale who traffics human organs.

Alice returns from her death to act as witness and participant in Prague's tumultuous history from its foundation to 1989. History's losers return to watch the victors enjoy and lose their spoils. An unusual quest for self, for one's place in life, and in the world, a world that is embodied in Prague.

'Geoffrey Chew's excellent translations manage the impressive feat of rendering these writers' combination of overripe succulence and austere archaism in an English that's both ornamental and fluent." - The Times Literary Supplement'And My Head Exploded: Tales of Desire, Delerium and Decadence in Fin-de-siecle Prague'.

A young man creates his own time machine and travels back in time to witness battles between Prussia and Austria. The first ever SF novel written in Czech by the celebrated Modernist author Jakub Arbes.

Written at the beginning of the last century and set in 2026, 'Metropolis' by Thea von Harbou was the novel that inspired the cult silent SF Movie of the same name, directed by her future husband, Fritz Lang. The novel is more complex and nuanced than the movie: The city of the future is two cities: one occupied by its hedonistic ruling class and that of a much larger segregated subculture, toilers in a mechanised underworld, labouring to provide the rich with their pleasures. When a charismatic leader arises, she seeks a savior to unite the disparate social orders. "Between the brain that plans and the hands that build," she declares, "there must be a mediator―the heart." Does this sound familiar?

A grandmother passes on her wisdom to her neighbours, friends and grandchildren in rural Bohemia. A fine example of 19C proto-feminist fiction.

When Czech nurse Jan Kraus is charged with the care of 99-year-old Wenzel Winterberg, a Sudetenland German expelled from his Bohemian homelandafter the Second World War, Kraus believes that their time together is limited. But a casual remark from Kraus one night sparks a new life in the old man who becomes obsessed with uncovering the fate of his lost love, Lenka Morgenstern. Kraus is the dragged along by Winterberg on a meandering train journey from Berlin to Sarajevo, all the while dealing with Winterberg's regular 'historical fits'. There only guide is Winterberg's Baedeker for Austro-Hungary from 1913 - the last edition ever issued.

Barcode, Krisztina Toth's first substantial work in prose after four volumes of remarkable verse, consists of fifteen beautifully written and highly sensual short stories. Each story, apart from one, is told with poetic intensity and intimacy from a young, unnamed female narrator's point of view.

Daniela Hodrova shares her unique perception of Prague, through playful poetic prose, and by imaginatively blending historical and cultural motifs with autobiographical moments. A Kingdom of Souls is the first volume of this author's literary journey - an unusual quest for self, for one's place in life and in the world; a world that for Hodrova is embodied in Prague. Translated by Veronique Firkusny and Elena Sokol.

Balla is often described as “the Slovak Kafka” for his depictions of the absurd and the mundane. In the Name of the Father features a nameless narrator reflecting on his life, looking for someone else to blame for his failed relationship with his parents and two sons, his serial adultery, the breakup of his marriage and his wife’s descent into madness. Against the backdrop of their stiflingly grey provincial lives, he completely fails to act against “the thing” growing in the cellar of the house he built with his brother. The book won numerous awards in Slovakia and in this edition is accompanied by three additional short stories, which share its unique dark humour, satire and truth.

Blanka takes a summer job at a centre for people with physical disabilities in the French city of Marseille, where her encounter with their severe conditions ends badly. A deeply unsettling, visceral tale of a young woman unravelling, evolving from carer to cared for. A novel about our own inability to escape ‘our own private cages’, imprisoned by fear, anxiety and mistrust, no less than indifference to others.The author:IVANA DOBRAKOVOVÁ (1982) graduated from Bratislava's Comenius University with a degree in English and French (translation and interpretation). She is based in Turin where she works as a freelance translator from French and Italian into Slovak, currently working on Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. She debuted in 2009 with her short story collection Prvá smrť v rodine (The First Death in the Family), followed by the novel Bellevue (2010). Her most recent collection of short stories Toxo appeared in 2013. She has won several literary competitions, including Poviedka 2008, and all three of her books have been shortlisted for the Anasoft Litera prize. In 2019, she was awarded the EU Prize for Literature.

The reader arrives in Adam Bodor's world, the periphery of civilization, at the break of dawn. Adam, the foster son of Brigadier Anatol Korkodus is waiting at the dilapidated station for a boy who is arriving from a reformatory.Soon afterwards, Korkodus is arrested for unfathomable reasons. Yet this decaying and sinister world is not devoid of a certain joie de vivre: people eat gourmet dishes, point out their interlocutor's hidden motives with incredibly dark humor and enjoy the region's stunning natural beauty.

The latest collection of short stories from the winner of the EU Prize for Literature.