Radka Denemarková

Radka Denemarková was born in Kutná Hora, Czech Republic, in 1968. She studied German and Czech at the Charles University in Prague. After completing her PhD in 1997, she worked as a lecturer at the Institute of Czech Literature whilst also working as a translator and journalist. Her debut novel, A já pořád kdo to tluče, temná komedie, was published in the Czech Republic in 2005. Denemarková’s second novel, Money from Hitler, was published in 2009. It tells the story of Gita, a Jewish girl who escapes death in a concentration camp and returns to her Bohemian homeland after the war. There, however, she is denounced by the villagers as a German-speaking Nazi collaborator, humiliated and driven out once more. Sixty years later, she returns once more to clear her family’s name, only to be met once again by the villagers’ hatred. Her writing style stems not least from her experience as a translator for Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Bernhard, as well as from her work as a dramaturg and editor at the Divadlo Na zábradlí theatre in Prague. Her novel Hours of Lead, published in 2018, is a furious indictment of the Chinese dictatorship and Europe’s hypocritical role, and was awarded the Magnesia Litera Prize. Her new book, Chocolate Blood, was published in 2023.

Denemarková has been awarded the Georg Dehio Book Prize (2012), the H. C. Artmann Scholarship (2019), the Leuk Literature Prize (2019), the Styria State Literature Prize (2022) and the European Tolerance Prize awarded by the City of Villach (2024). She was also elected to the German Academy for Language and Literature in 2023.

Money from Hitler
2009

Hours of Lead
2018

Kobold
2011

Chocolate Blood
2023