English / Authors /

(1964)
Novelist, poet and author of a dramatic adaptation of her own novel.

This “Viewegh in skirts”, as Czech literary critics have dubbed her, writes very readable books full of humour, just like the most popular Czech writer, Michal Viewegh. Nonetheless, she is a unique and distinctive author who has mastered the art of observation and characterisation; this mastery is seen to greatest effect in her typically apt ironic shortcuts and dialogues.

A master storyteller of attractive tales of human fates and relationships set in both past and present.


Selected bibliography:

Goldstein píše dceři (Goldstein Writes to his Daughter, novel in letters, 1997)
A book of subtle epistles sent from Israel by an ageing film director, the emigrant Goldstein, to his daughter in Prague. The letters gradually shed light on the course of Goldstein´s life as well as the inconsistencies in his relationship with his daughter. This relationship has been established far too late; the reader compares his idealised imaginations with the reality of their actual and often conflicting encounters. This tragicomic story of love and self-love takes place in the recent past –in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Review:
“This slim book is a surprisingly mature and intellectually inspiring psychological study.”
(Irena Zítková, Literární noviny)

Hrdý Budžes (Proud Budžes, novel, 1998, 2002, 20,000 copies sold) )
The story of this book is told by a young girl who is at once smart and naive. Helenka guides us through the first years of the “government” of the communist president Husák, describing comic as well as less amusing episodes and situations involving children and grown-ups in one town in the course of a year. The short episodes create a compact story which reveals both the small and greater tragedies of Helenka’s childhood, all presented with a comforting forgiveness.

Dramatisations of the novel Proud Budžes have been extremely successful (2002/2003 Příbram Theatre, 2003 – 2005/6 Bez Zábradlí Theatre in Prague; TV recording of the play – broadcast on the ČT1 channel, 2003, 2004, 2005; a radio play in ten parts based on the book has been broadcast on Czech Radio 3 – Vltava).

Reviews:
“Every one of us drags some traumas from childhood into later, adult life. Some people manage to cope with these quite well while others lock them inside themselves for the rest of their lives. Irena Dousková is definitely not pampering hers in her novel Proud Budžes. She depicts the world of her childhood as seen by a girl in the second year of elementary school in the town of Ničín, offering a radical and unusual attitude to the era of Normalization in Czechoslovakia and in particular to the world of grown-ups, who are ‘not as mischievous as children, are generally much nicer and don’t laugh at each other for being fat!’ (…) By its very nature Proud Budžes is a light, relaxed, gentle and intelligent read which will provoke the reader to tears of laughter and nose-blows of nostalgia."
(Bára Gregorová, iliteratura)

"Proud Budžes is one of those works of literature (compare, in Czech, Striptease Chicago, written in exile by Jan Novák, and Britain's Diaries of Adrian Mole) in which the account of a child - in all its stunning authenticity - is an instrument of revelation and accusation of the imperfect adult world.
The intense witness of a nine-year-old girl is by turns moving and comic, not least by the language in which it is borne. The girl's voice tells of more than our roots, human relations, the world as she finds it: the power of communist tyranny to crush the family seems almost a matter of secondary importance, part of a later plan."
(Jan Čulík, Britské listy)

"An exceptional eye for detail and an extraordinary understanding of the mind of a child makes of this early Seventies retrospective a fresh and lively variation on that eternal theme "báječná léta pod psa" ["blissful years of lousy living"]."
(Vladimír Novotný, Lidové noviny)

"The many short chapters are in fact satires on Husák's regime, caricatures of its narrowness and brutality. For her own safety the author has entered the mind of a child, where things have different dimensions and the gap between joy and despair is almost imperceptible, though the sensations of joy and despair are far deeper and much harder on the nerves. [...] Czech prose has never before offered such a view of the misery of Husák's Normalization."
(Milan Jungman, Týden)

Foreign editions:
Colibri, Bulgaria, 2005

Rights sold to:
DTV, Germany
Zysk i S-ka Wydawnictwo, Poland
Kalligram, Hungary


Někdo s nožem (Someone With a Knife, novel, 2000)
Story of a young woman going through a deep emotional crisis. From outside, she seems to be living in a traditional and well-organised marriage and her life does not defy the common pattern: husband who earns quite good money but is not with her most of the time, isolation in her household, children. Even though she loves her husband and children, she is not content with her situation. She describes her life in diary-style notes and seeks a way out.

Review:
“The notes reproduce plausibly the contemporary phrasing used most often by the younger and middle-aged generations with a dynamic drive and a lot of wit. (...) The overall impression of the new book by Irena Dousková is more than a good one thanks to her handling of leitmotif and sketches, as well as the compositional frame of the novel.”
(Lubomír Machala, Lidové noviny)

Doktor Kott přemítá (Doctor Kott Wonders, short stories, 2002)
Book containing twelve short stories on the imperfection of human relationships, the main motif of which is the contrast between banal reality and the world of dreams and imagination peopled by ourselves and others. The author tells her stories in sober language, but the seeming simplicity of the narration reveals a very keen observational talent and an ability to describe existential realities in very few words.

Review:
“With its precise understanding of life and the human relationships around us, this is, in my opinion, an authentic description of life in contemporary Czech society with unusually wide resonance. These short stories could be translated into various foreign languages and draw the reader’s attention through the purity of their universally applicable humanity. Since the fall of the communist regime in 1989, a special kind of reality has emerged within Czech society which bears some signs of the past era of totalitarianism, however strongly modified, as well as brand new phenomena showing the hovering of Czech society between its former belonging to the communist East and today´s strengthening relations with the West. The short stories of Irena Dousková bear an extraordinary witness to this transitory period of our present.”
(Jan Čulík, Britské listy)

Foreign editions:
Colibri, Bulgaria, 2005

Čím se liší tato noc (Why This Night Is Different, short stories, March 2004)
A book of short stories containing ten mostly ballad-like tales that recount events occurring over a wide stretch of time – from the early decades of our age all the way to the 1970’s. The common theme that unites the ten stories, which were composed as a unity from the very beginning, is suggested by the opening quotation from Zeyer’s J. M. Plojhar: “I know her: she is not bad, but people who are moderately good can also be very tough.”

Notes:
Sample translations into various languages are available upon request; English and German translations are available on these web pages.



Goldstein píše dceři / Goldstein Writes to his Daughter



Hrdý Budžes / Proud Budžes (second edition)


Někdo s nožem / Someone With a Knife



Doktor Kott přemítá / Doctor Kott Reflects



Čím se liší tato noc / Why This Night Is Different