Jáchym Topol’s The Devil’s Workshop Nominated for International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

Alex Zucker’s translation of Jáchym Topol’s The Devil’s Workshop, published by Portobello Books, was named yesterday as one of 142 titles in the running for the 2015 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award with a prize of €100,000 [media release here]. If the winning book is a translation, €75,000 is awarded to the author and €25,000 to the translator.

The Devil’s Workshop, one of 49 translated works named to the longlist, was nominated by the Karviná Regional Library and the Třinec Municipal Library of the Czech Republic.

Books are nominated for the award by invited public libraries in cities throughout the world, on the basis of “high literary merit” as determined by the nominating library.

The shortlist will be announced April 15, 2015, and the winner will be declared by the Lord Mayor of Dublin on June 17.

Literalab Names Jáchym Topol’s The Devil’s Workshop Best Book of 2013

Michael Stein of Literalab, a blog highlighting Central and East European writing, yesterday singled out Alex Zucker’s translation of Jáchym Topol’s The Devil’s Workshop (Portobello Books) as his “favorite book of 2013,” topping a list of nine in his annual Best Books post.

Stein writes:

Like my favorite book of the year before, my favorite book of 2013 delves into the ultimate horrors that man inflicts on his fellow man, but does so with a surplus of imagination, suspense and humor. Whereas Selvedin Avdić’s Seven Terrors [trans. Coral Petkovich] dealt with the war in Bosnia, Topol focuses on the genocide that took place in what is now the Czech Republic, and more extremely and lesser known to the world, in Khatyn in Belarus. More than that, he shows how the dark and still often obscure chapters of history in the former Eastern Bloc have been used and distorted by westerners for their own more narrowly personal ends. In expounding very complex and provocative ideas Topol has written a novel that has a uniquely surreal effect.

Jáchym Topol’s The Devil’s Workshop Reviewed in TLS

Thanks to the boundless enthusiasm and energy of Daniel Medin, this glowing review appeared in the Sept. 27, 2013, issue of the Times Literary Supplement:

“The Devil’s Workshop is a miracle of compression, its scope greater than ought to be possible for a book of its length. It should help to cement Jáchym Topol’s reputation as one of the most original and compelling European voices at work today.”