From 294 Manuscripts, the Jury Selected Three Novels for Frankfurt. They Learned the Names Only Afterward, and All Three Were Written by Women

A six-member international jury selected three novel manuscripts that will represent Czech literature at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. It chose from among 294 submitted texts and judged them anonymously. It learned the authors' names only after the final decision. Only then did it turn out that all three winning manuscripts had been written by women. Seznam Zprávy ↗ Aktuálně.cz ↗

The Novel for Frankfurt competition was launched by the Moravian Library in Brno as part of preparations for the Czech guest-of-honor presentation at the fair. The results were announced at the Goethe-Institut in Prague by the library's director, Tomáš Kubíček, and the head of the Czech Literary Centre, Martin Krafl. Deník ↗

Three manuscripts, three different books

The first of the awarded texts is Krávy (Cows) by Iva Hadj Moussa. The author is a writer, screenwriter and psychologist, and the jury praised the prose for its black humor and cynicism in the central trio of heroines. She herself describes it as her darkest book, one that speaks of the weight of guilt, female friendship and ambiguous moral decisions. Deník ↗ Seznam Zprávy ↗

Barva duše (Colour of the Soul) by Veronika Opatřilová is set in northern Sweden, and the author sums it up as a story about the search for biological parents, a complicated coming-of-age, and the fates of three people that ultimately intersect. Opatřilová translates from Swedish and English and has four books to her name. According to the jury's own assessment, they were drawn to her figurative, poetic and expressive language. Deník ↗ Seznam Zprávy ↗

The third text is the psychological novel Jezero (The Lake) by Ludmila Svozilová, which has a mysterious tone and is set in a psychiatrist's consulting room. The author had worked on it since 2012 — nearly fourteen years. Deník ↗

The jury didn't know who it was reading

The competition was launched in October 2024, and ten texts advanced from it to the final round. Besides the three winners, the finalists included Roman Forst, Eva Franková, Štěpán Kuchlei, Eugen Liška, Alice Škrlant, Barbora Vajsejtlová and Ivo Vysoudil. Many of the submitted manuscripts were debut works. Seznam Zprávy ↗ Deník ↗

The jury was made up of foreign Bohemists and literary critics and was led by Alessandro Catalano, a professor of literary studies at the University of Padua. According to her, the decisive factors were literary quality, originality, compositional assurance and the novel's ability to appeal to a foreign reader. She described comparing such different texts as demanding. Seznam Zprávy ↗ Aktuálně.cz ↗

Kubíček added regarding the result that the point was not merely to select three names. "We managed to activate a broad literary scene, and perhaps even to discover a work that would otherwise have remained hidden," he said. He described the entire final ten, not just the awarded texts, as being of high quality. Deník ↗ Seznam Zprávy ↗

The reward is mainly the translation

Each of the three authors will receive 80,000 Czech crowns, roughly 3,300 euros. But more important than the sum is the second part of the prize. Translations of excerpts from their texts will be made into English, German, French and Spanish, and the authors will present their novels in person in Frankfurt. Aktuálně.cz ↗

That is precisely the point of the fair. Frankfurt is, after all, not primarily a place where books are sold to readers, but where translation rights are traded. A sample in four languages is the ticket to such negotiations, because without it a manuscript is illegible to a foreign publisher.

Why women won

The jury did not know the names, so the result was not the product of a quota. Kubíček explains it as a shift on the readers' side. "We see it in libraries too — from a certain age, women have more time to read; our female readers tend to come back to us around their forties," he said. Deník ↗

"Men, if they even recall that they once knew how to read, don't show up until their senior years. Logically, then, demand arises for women's stories and women's writing. It's a worldwide trend, by the way," the library director added. Deník ↗

Who else is going to Frankfurt

Czechia will be guest of honor at the fair from October 7 to 11. Besides the three winners, the presentation will also feature Michal Ajvaz, Tereza Boučková, Radka Denemarková, Jiří Hájíček, Miroslav Hlaučo, Alena Mornštajnová, Marek Torčík, Kateřina Tučková and Eli Beneš. Deník ↗

Jáchym Topol will mark what would have been Václav Havel's ninetieth birthday there and will present his latest novel Peklo neexistuje (Hell Doesn't Exist). Jaroslav Rudiš, who lives alternately in Berlin and Czechia, will discuss breaking down the barriers between Czech and German culture. Deník ↗

A question that will come only after the fair

Kubíček says the Ministry of Culture's support for the Frankfurt preparations meets expectations, since the government is bound by contract regarding the fair. But he considers it crucial how the ministry approaches domestic literature afterward, once the fair is over. In his view, results will come only if state support for translations is also stabilized. Deník ↗

That is a point easily overlooked on the day the winners are announced. Guest-of-honor status is a one-time investment, but a translator who learns Czech, and a foreign publisher who grows accustomed to Czech prose, need years. Slovak media had not written about the Czech selection before this article.

Ilustračná fotka: Hall 3 of the Frankfurt Book Fair, photographed at the 2025 edition. Foto: Dr. Thomas Liptak / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0