Czech Literary Awards Ceremony To Be Hosted By Actress Anna Geislerová

This Tuesday, February 17, the eighth annual Czech literary awards Magnesia Litera was opened. The awards are granted to Czech authors and translators in the following categories - fiction, poetry, literature for kids and translation – according to the results of public voting. This year more than 320 new releases have been presented.

The winners – usually there are seven or eight of them – will be announced during a festive ceremony hosted this year by Czech actress Anna Geislerová. She commented upon her involvement to a correspondent of Radio.cz: “… I feel that it is an honour for me to do it, but as well I am quite nervous, because it is a huge responsibility for the big evening, and nobody wants to do it. Everybody says ‘yeah, it is going to be a big building full of intellectuals, writers, and they are going to be bored by you’. But I say ‘so what! I have no ambition to make these people laugh their heads off’. I just would like to do it the right way, which I think we will figure out.”

Anna Geislerová believes that Magnesia Litera is rather important for promoting Czech literature and culture: “I think it is a wonderful thing to have a prize which is becoming so important. The people who win it do feel it is an honour for them. And also the prize, just the winning of the prize is priceless. And then, you know, this prize does have an influence, because people hear about the winner of this award and then they buy more of these books. So I think this prize is working.”

Photo: Anna Geislerová (karisha.blog.cz)