About the systems we create to make our lives easier, which then end up oppressing us. Marek Šindelka will discuss his novel Systémy něhy (Systems of Tenderness), which has become this year’s literary sensation, in an interview with writer Jan Němec.

Marek Šindelka is a Czech writer, poet, and screenwriter. He is one of the most prominent and most widely translated Czech prose writers of his generation. He made his debut with the poetry collection Strychnin a jiné básně (Strychnine and Other Poems, 2005), for which he won the Jiří Orten Award. This was followed two years later by his debut novel Aberrant, which was published in English in 2017. His other works include the collection of short stories Zůstaňte s námi (Stay Tuned, 2011), which won the Magnesia Litera award for prose. Šindelka’s texts are characterised by vivid imagery, precise composition, and an ability to capture the tension of the contemporary world through both physical and mental experience. As a screenwriter, he collaborated with Vojtěch Mašek on the film Occupation (2021), which won a Czech Lion Award for best screenplay. In 2026, after a ten-year hiatus, he published a new novel called Systémy něhy (Systems of Tenderness), in which he revisits themes of fragility, loneliness, and the pressure to perform, demonstrating how societal demands affect the human psyche, body, and intimate relationships.

Jan Němec is a Czech writer, journalist, and publicist. He is the author of a biographical novel about the life of Czech modernist photographer and artist František Drtikol, A History of Light (2013), for which he received the European Union Prize for Literature. He also wrote the auto-fiction novel Možnosti milostného románu (Ways of Writing About Love, 2019), which was nominated for the Magnesia Litera Award, or Liliputin: Povídky z války (Liliputin, Stories from the War, 2022). Together with Petr Vizina, he compiled a book of interviews on spirituality titled Znamení neznámého (Signs of the unknown, 2021). Since 2022 he has been editor-in-chief of the Host literary magazine.