LOVE LETTERS IN CUNEIFORM: On the lines between the personal and the political

A reading and discussion with author Tomáš Zmeškal and translator Alex Zucker, moderated by Seth Rogoff

Tomáš Zmeškal (1966) was born in Prague to a Czech mother and a Congolese father. In 1987 he left Communist Czechoslovakia for London, where he studied English language and literature at King’s College. He returned to Prague in the 1990s, after the end of communism, earned a master’s in cultural anthropology from Charles University, then worked as a secondary school teacher of English literature while teaching creative writing and writing. Currently he is earning a Ph.D. in art history. He has published two novels (Milostný dopis klínovým písmem; 2008 / Love Letter in Cuneiform; 2016 and Životopis černobílého jehnětě; 2009 / Biography of a Black-and-White Lamb); a work of literary nonfiction (Sokrates na rovníku; 2013 / Socrates at the Equator); and numerous radio plays.

Alex Zucker (1964) was born in the U.S., lived in Prague from 1990 to 1995, and has been translating Czech professionally ever since. The list of authors he has Englished, besides Tomáš Zmeškal, includes Zuzana Říhová, Magdaléna Platzová, Jáchym Topol, Bianca Bellová, Petra Hůlová, Josef Jedlička, J. R. Pick, Heda Margolius Kovály, Jan Patočka, Patrik Ouředník, and Miloslava Holubová. He currently lives in Brooklyn.