Name: The Mushroom Gatherer: An Evening with Author Viktorie Hanišová
Start: 2026-02-22T17:00:00-06:00
End: 2026-02-22T18:30:00-06:00
Location: 5701 W 22nd Pl, Cicero, IL, United States, Illinois 60804

$The Mushroom Gatherer: An Evening with Author Viktorie Hani\u0161ov\u00e1$

Join us on Sunday, February 22 at 5:00 PM for an event with Viktorie Hanišová, one of the leading voices in contemporary Czech fiction, marking the English-language release of her acclaimed novel The Mushroom Gatherer (2025), originally published in Czech as Houbařka (2018). Renowned for her psychologically precise prose and her exploration of difficult emotional and social themes, Hanišová will discuss this powerful work, which probes solitude, vulnerability, and the longing for human connection.
Free and open to public. RSVP at [email protected] or 312-375-2541. 🍄‍🟫
What hides in mycelium?
Hanišová debuted in 2015 with Anežka, a widely praised novel centered on a fraught relationship between a mother and her adopted daughter, and about hidden racism and social prejudice. A family secret lies at the heart of her second novel as well—something the protagonist has carried since childhood and is trying to forget. But can one ever truly escape the past?
The Mushroom Gatherer
Sára lives alone in an old cottage in the Bohemian Forest, earning a modest living by gathering mushrooms. Every morning she pulls on her worn boots, takes her basket and knife, and sets out along the same forest paths she has followed for seven years. From spring through autumn, she gathers mushrooms from the same familiar places and sells them for a few hundred crowns.
A hermit by choice, she has no friends and rarely leaves her secluded world, except for occasional visits to a psychiatrist in Plzeň, whom she tries to convince of her mental stability. When she learns of her mother’s death, her carefully ordered life appears at first to remain unchanged. Yet what seems insignificant on the surface quietly gathers dangerous force beneath it.
Viktorie Hanišová is a Czech novelist, translator, and teacher, widely regarded as one of the most distinctive voices of her generation. She studied English and German at Charles University in Prague and debuted in 2015 with the novel Anežka. Her subsequent books include The Mushroom Gatherer (as Houbařka, 2018), Rekonstrukce (2019), the short story collection Dlouhá trať (2020), Beton a hlína (2021), and the novel Neděle odpoledne (2022). Her political novella Tvůj táta je v ohni is forthcoming in 2026.