Radka Denemarková

novelist, screenwriter, literary historian, and translator of German literature

Radka Denemarková is a novelist, screenwriter, literary historian, and translator of German literature. She is among the most original and most translated Czech writers today. Her books include Money from Hitler (Peníze od Hitlera, 2006), Kobold (2011), A Contribution to the History of Joy (Příspěvek k dějinám radosti, 2014), The Hours of Lead (Hodiny z olova, 2019), and most recently Chocolate Blood (Čokoládová krev, 2023). In her work she has repeatedly addressed the crisis of European values and the legacy of totalitarianism, exploring the various forms of power relations. She is the only Czech author to have won the Magnesia Litera award in four different categories. She has also received a number of important international awards, including the Georg Dehio Culture Prize (2012), the Brücke Berlin Preis (2022), and the European Tolerance Prize for Democracy and Human Rights (2024). She was also the first Czech writer to be awarded the Odradek Book Prize for a Kafka-related publication, part of the Austrian Franz Kafka Prize (2024). In 2024 she was inducted into the German Academy for Language and Literature, and the same year she was also awarded the Medal of Merit First Grade by the Czech President for her work in the field of culture and art.