We did a very brief interview with
Ms. Allen for the February issue in 2013, meaning for our very first issue.
Since “Generation Czech” tells little about the author who collected the
responses and so does the first interview, a new and more thematically concise
question-answer session seemed sound. Here it is.
Do you recall hearing about the Velvet Revolution? Where were you at the
time and how did it you hear about it (even if years later)?
I was in my final year at primary school when the Berlin Wall fell; I
remember our headmaster showing us a greyish lump of rock which had been part
of that barrier dividing the German capital.
To me this object looked a lot like a bit of rubble you might find in a
skip or on a building site. In other words, I’m not sure I fully understood
then just how important this moment in history really was – but then again, I
was only ten!
What three contemporary authors do
you consider to be the most interesting novelists?
This is always a difficult question to answer but recently I’ve greatly
enjoyed reading Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel.
Zadie Smith’s NW is an outstanding
portrayal of the chaotic melting pot that is contemporary London; each part is
written in a very different narrative style - for example one section might be
told in by a classic omniscient narrator while the next might suddenly switch
to a stream of consciousness mode – this is intended to be deliberately jarring
to mimic the experience of moving from one very different part of the city to
another. I’m only halfway through but Tony
Hogan Bought me an Ice Cream Float Before he Stole my Ma (great title!) is
a story set in a working class one-parent family which thankfully isn’t a
misery-fest. Contemporary novels often only portray middle class experience so
I’m glad to see writers like Hudson having some success.
How did you end up running the
English Skills and Cultural Communication seminar?
I applied for the job which I saw advertised in the Prague Post a few
months after I had arrived in Prague– and the rest is history!
This winter semester you had an
optional seminar course named “Thatcher and After: British Literature in the
1980s and beyond”. Which books from this period would you recommend reading?
Anyone interested in British culture in this period could start by
watching “Boys from the Black Stuff”, a groundbreaking British TV drama
which is available on Youtube (at the time of writing anyway!). It gives you a
real insight into the struggles of the working classes under Thatcherism.
Martin Amis looms large over the 1980s British literary scene so I’d recommend
having a look at any of his novels written during the period: I greatly enjoyed
reading Other People as a teenager as
I had read little ‘experimental’ fiction before but there’s also Money and Success. I think most students who signed up for the “Thatcher and
After” course enjoyed reading Jonathon Coe’s What a Carve Up!, a dark comedy about the period which borrows
elements of gothic fiction and murder mystery and uses them to create sharp
satire. Salman Rushie’s Midnight’s
Children (which won the Best of the Booker Prize) is also excellent but
unfortunately I don’t include it in my course so as not to clash with the
Postcolonial modules available.
Are you planning to stay in the Czech Republic?
I have no plans to move back to the
UK for the moment so I suppose I’ll be forced to eat carp at Christmas for some
time to come!
Interview conducted by Anna Hupcejová
