Radka Denemarková

born 1968
novelist, dramatist, TV screenplay writer, translator, essayist, teacher of creative writing
author of three books of fiction
the only Czech writer who has received Magnesia Litera prizes three times (in different categories – for prose, non-fiction and translation)


Radka Denemarková studied German and Czech at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, gaining her doctorate in 1997. She worked as a researcher at the Institute for Czech Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and was dramatic advisor at the Na zábradlí theatre in Prague. She has been freelance since 2004. She is the author of Sám sobě nepřítelem / Being My Own Enemy (1998; a monograph about theatre and film director Evald Schorm), Ohlédnutí za Milenou Honzíkovou /Remembering Milena Honzíková (2003; in: Dopis zmizelému / Letter to the One Who Disappeared) and is the editor of the anthology Zlatá šedesátá / The Golden Sixties (2000). Her debut work of fiction A já pořád kdo to tluče / The Devil by the Nose was published in 2005, followed a year later by the novel Peníze od Hitlera / Money from Hitler (winner of the prestigious Magnesia Litera prize for the year’s best work of prose). The Polish edition of the latter work was nominated for the Angelus Prize (2009), while the German edition won the Usedom Prize for Literature (2011) and Georg Dehio Prize (2012). For the monographic novel Smrt, nebudeš se báti aneb Příběh Petra Lébla / You Will not be Afraid of Death: The Story of Petr Lébl (2008) she won a Magnesia Litera for the year’s best work of non-fiction. In 2010 the Na zábradlí theatre produced her play Spací vady / Sleeping Deficiencies. For her rendering of Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller’s Atemschaukel (Cz. Rozhoupaný dech), Radka Denemarková won the 2011 Magnesia Litera for translation of the year. She lives in Prague with daughter Ester and son Jan.

Her work has so far been published in 6 countries (Hungary, Poland, Germany, Canada - in English, Slovenia and Italy), with the rights sold to Bulgaria too.

See also the web pages of Radka Denemarková´s German publisher.

more on http://www.radka.denemarkova.cz/