American Center's announcement:
Prague: A Long Journey Home by Charles Ota Heller
Ota Karel Heller was a Czech boy whose misfortune it was to be born a Christian-Jewish hybrid three years before a war which claimed the lives of six million people with whom he shared a common bond – of which he was totally unaware. He managed to survive, but fifteen of the victims of Nazi murderers were members of his family. Four years later – after his country was taken over by the communists – Ota Karel Heller disappeared. He was resurrected by his parents as Charles Ota Heller in America, having left not only his identity, but also memories and scars, behind on the other side of the Atlantic. Or so he thought… After many years of success as an American entrepreneur and academic, of happy marriage and fatherhood, and of having gained a degree of national prominence, he was confronted with demons of his past. Two cataclysmic events caused him to question his denial of his ethnic roots. He has written a memoir, Prague: A Long Journey Home, about his adventures. The book has been translated into Czech and published in 2011 by Mladá fronta as Dlouhá cesta domu. Program will be in English. Thursday, April 28, from 6:30 PM.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Preparing for book launch in Prague
This is an exciting time for me. The official launch of my memoir, Dlouha cesta domu (Long Journey Home) is only two weeks away. I will be signing at the Neoluxor, the largest bookstore in the country, in Prague on Wednesday, April 27. Various other signings and interviews in Prague and the surroundings have been arranged. I have my fingers crossed for a good reception by readers and reviewers!
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Panel of Czech and Slovak immigrants
On Thursday, March 24, I will participate in a panel discussion at the Czech Embassy in Washington. We will talk about our experiences as Czech and Slovak immigrants trying to "make it in America." I'd like to invite interested readers of this blog to attend. The Embassy's invitation follows:
Dear Friends of Czech Culture:
The Embassy of the Czech Republic, in cooperation with the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library (NCSML), will present the NCSML's oral history project: Recording Voices and Documenting Memories, on Thursday, March 24, at 6:30 pm.
The project captures and preserves the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War era and who settled in Chicago, Cleveland, and Washington, DC. At this event, project coordinator Rosie Johnston will moderate a panel discussion to include previous interviewees Vojtech Mastny, Dagmar White, Charles Heller, Juraj Slavik, and John Palka. Major Gifts Officer Leah Wilson will be on hand to talk about the NCSML's progress towards rebuilding and expanding the museum campus since the flood of 2008.
Wine and light refreshments will be served after the discussion.
The event is part of the project Democracy and Human Rights: Lessons from the Past for the Current Czech Foreign Policy, organized by the Embassy of the Czech Republic from January through June 2011.
R.S.V.P. to czech_events@yahoo.com with “Oral History Project” in the subject line by March 23.
Additional questions: 202/274-9108, e-mail: jana_racova@mzv.cz
Location: Embassy of the Czech Republic, 3900 Spring of Freedom St., NW, Washington, DC 20008
Dear Friends of Czech Culture:
The Embassy of the Czech Republic, in cooperation with the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library (NCSML), will present the NCSML's oral history project: Recording Voices and Documenting Memories, on Thursday, March 24, at 6:30 pm.
The project captures and preserves the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War era and who settled in Chicago, Cleveland, and Washington, DC. At this event, project coordinator Rosie Johnston will moderate a panel discussion to include previous interviewees Vojtech Mastny, Dagmar White, Charles Heller, Juraj Slavik, and John Palka. Major Gifts Officer Leah Wilson will be on hand to talk about the NCSML's progress towards rebuilding and expanding the museum campus since the flood of 2008.
Wine and light refreshments will be served after the discussion.
The event is part of the project Democracy and Human Rights: Lessons from the Past for the Current Czech Foreign Policy, organized by the Embassy of the Czech Republic from January through June 2011.
R.S.V.P. to czech_events@yahoo.com with “Oral History Project” in the subject line by March 23.
Additional questions: 202/274-9108, e-mail: jana_racova@mzv.cz
Location: Embassy of the Czech Republic, 3900 Spring of Freedom St., NW, Washington, DC 20008
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Arnost Lustig
Recently, we completed the final edits of the galley proofs of the Czech-language translation of my memoir, DLOUHA CESTA DOMU (LONG JOURNEY HOME). The first two pages of the book-to-be are blank. They were waiting to be filled by words from the pen of one of the most widely read, and beloved, of Czech contemporary writers -- Arnost Lustig. Sadly, it will not happen. After a long, courageous, battle with cancer, Arnost Lustig died a week ago.
Mr. Lustig was a survivor of the concentration camps, Terezin and Auschwitz. At the latter, he saw his father marched off to a gas chamber and his mother humiliated by German soldiers. At the camps, too, he experienced goodness from fellow inmates who cared for and protected the young boy from the Nazis. His books, in both Czech and English, and several made into movies, were based on his experiences in the camps. Occupying a special place in my own library are his INDECENT DREAMS and LOVELY GREEN EYES.
Early last month, my Prague editor, a close friend of the writer, went to Lustig's apartment to ask if the Foreword to my book was finished. Arnost's daughter Eva said that it was not, but she expressed the hope that her father might dictate it to her from his sick-bed. That was not to be. He said that he doesn't know how to dictate and that he must write himself on his "machine."
Naturally, I am sad that this great man did not partner with me on my book. But, I am devastated by the fact that I did not have the opportunity to meet him. His friend, the American writer Tom Chilcotte, wrote: "Arnost took great pride in his ability to assess people quickly, a skill he learned out of necessity in the camps. He knew as soon as he met someone whether he would have liked to have been imprisoned with them." I'll never find out whether or not Arnost Lustig would have been willing to share a cell with me. I can only hope so.
Mr. Lustig was a survivor of the concentration camps, Terezin and Auschwitz. At the latter, he saw his father marched off to a gas chamber and his mother humiliated by German soldiers. At the camps, too, he experienced goodness from fellow inmates who cared for and protected the young boy from the Nazis. His books, in both Czech and English, and several made into movies, were based on his experiences in the camps. Occupying a special place in my own library are his INDECENT DREAMS and LOVELY GREEN EYES.
Early last month, my Prague editor, a close friend of the writer, went to Lustig's apartment to ask if the Foreword to my book was finished. Arnost's daughter Eva said that it was not, but she expressed the hope that her father might dictate it to her from his sick-bed. That was not to be. He said that he doesn't know how to dictate and that he must write himself on his "machine."
Naturally, I am sad that this great man did not partner with me on my book. But, I am devastated by the fact that I did not have the opportunity to meet him. His friend, the American writer Tom Chilcotte, wrote: "Arnost took great pride in his ability to assess people quickly, a skill he learned out of necessity in the camps. He knew as soon as he met someone whether he would have liked to have been imprisoned with them." I'll never find out whether or not Arnost Lustig would have been willing to share a cell with me. I can only hope so.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
America's finest writer
There's no doubt that many people will disagree with me, but in my opinion, the finest living American writer is Pat Conroy. I say this despite -- or because of -- the fact that every time I read or reread one of his books, Conroy's prose forces me to realize how inadequate my own writing is. There is no one alive who can describe a tree, a flower, a feeling, a woman, or a sunset as beautifully as this man with deep roots in the American South.
"The beauty of language, shaped in sentences as pretty as blue herons, brought me to my knees with pleasure. I did not know that words could pour through me like honey through a burst hive or that gardens seeded in dark secrecy could bloom along the borders of my half-ruined boyhood because a writer could touch me in all the broken places with his art." "He made the English language seem like a tongue he had invented himself."
If I possessed the skill, I would write the above words in praise of Pat Conroy. Instead, I'm left with having to turn his own words (about other writers) on himself. In his latest book, My Reading Life, he has articulated, as only he could, my feeling for the beauty of his prose. Thank you, Pat Conroy!
"The beauty of language, shaped in sentences as pretty as blue herons, brought me to my knees with pleasure. I did not know that words could pour through me like honey through a burst hive or that gardens seeded in dark secrecy could bloom along the borders of my half-ruined boyhood because a writer could touch me in all the broken places with his art." "He made the English language seem like a tongue he had invented himself."
If I possessed the skill, I would write the above words in praise of Pat Conroy. Instead, I'm left with having to turn his own words (about other writers) on himself. In his latest book, My Reading Life, he has articulated, as only he could, my feeling for the beauty of his prose. Thank you, Pat Conroy!
Friday, February 25, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
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