Štěpán Kučera: Alžírské arabesky

When the author was staying in Algiers, where his novel The Greatest Lesson of Don Quixote was about to be published, he wrote Algiers Arabesques there. Imaginatively and entertainingly, they hover on the border between travel reports, auto fiction and fiction, he also found inspiration in oral storytelling. He also adds micro-stories and features, song lyrics and excerpts from books to interviews with local residents. The mosaic is connected by the theme of one city, in which the author examines Algerian society and culture. It represents different periods, from prehistoric cave paintings in the Tassili mountains, through Berber and Arab traditions, the era of Ottoman and later French rule, to the formation of the Algerian "multicultural" nation. Two painful events of the 20th century also fall into this category - the war of independence and the civil war Kučera also notices current problems: social and gender inequality, environmental issues and the influence of religion, i.e. topics that also resonate in the Czech environment.

Štěpán Kučera (1985, Jablonec nad Nisou) studied journalism and media studies at Charles University in Prague, works as editor of Salon, the literary supplement of the daily newspaper Právo. In the publishing house Druhé město, he published the following books: a collection of short stories Judas was ufon... and other stories (2016), the novels The Gilgamesh Project (2019; nomination for Magnesia Litera for prose) and Don Quixote's Greatest Lesson (2021; nomination for Magnesia Litera for prose) ), the reportage prose Gablonz/Jablonec (2022; wider nomination of Magnesia Litera for journalism, Book of the Year of the Liberec Region) and Algerian Arabesques (2023) and a collection of interviews with figures of Czech and world science Just another end of the world: 33 interviews about the Anthropocene, "the age man" (2024). As co-editor and co-author, he participated, for example, in the Czech-Polish anthology Z obou brzechů / Z obu brzegów (Nakladatelství Bor; Book of the Liberecký Region 2024). He also writes song lyrics for the Liberec singer-songwriter Karel Pazder and the band NekrmiT.

In Czech language