The Transnational Series hosts Petra Hůlová and Carolina Pihelgas to discuss their books The Long Version and The Cut Line.About this Event
Join the for an in-store event with authors Petra Hůlová and Carolina Pihelgas to discuss and honor the release of their feminist novels and .
Can a woman wake up one day and say "#MeToo" 20 years after the fact? Or is "#MeToo" a right reserved for the younger generation asks Petra Hůlová in The Long Version.
In her early fifties, Czech author Sylvie Novak looks back on her successful career. As she embarks on a tour to promote her book of feminist essays—which she's not convinced has captured the nature of gender inequality—her teenage daughter Judita finds her journals from her youth, discovering the intimate relationship she had with a much older writer. Judita is convinced the experience scarred her for life, whereas Novak considers her daughter's views to be ignorant and absolutist, however critical she is toward the deep-seated machismo of Eastern European dissident cultures. Meanwhile, the man she loves has found a new, younger object of desire, leaving Novak to reflect on the decline of her sex appeal.
In The Long Version, brilliantly translated by Alex Zucker, we become spectators of Novak's tightrope walk, balancing between the old generation and the new, love and desire, and above all the myriad interpretations of the past. Like Novak, Hůlová seeks not to lay blame or win sympathy, but to explore the shifting meanings of feminism at a time of polarized thinking and, perhaps, discover a path toward reconciliation.
Petra Hůlová is a fiction writer and the recipient of several literary awards, including Czechia’s highest literary recognitions—the Magnesia Litera, the Josef Škvorecký Award, and the Jiří Orten Award. The English translation of her debut novel All This Belongs to Me, translated by Alex Zucker, won the ALTA National Translation Award. Hůlová lives in Prague, where she is a regular commentator on current events for the Czech press. She studied language, culture and anthropology at universities in Prague, Ulaanbaatar, and New York, and was a Fulbright scholar in the US. Her ten novels and three plays have been translated into thirteen languages. Her socio-critical satire The Movement continues to challenge sexual norms. The Long Version is her latest feminist novel, asking important questions about the #MeToo movement.
In the dog days of an Estonian summer, Liine flees to the countryside to put a conclusive end to her toxic 14-year relationship in The Cut Line.
Liine undergoes every stage of separation in a lone farmstead amid forests. Physical labor and gardening help her withstand her ex-partner's threats, the incredulity of friends and family, and her own anguish. Dread is pervasive in this novel. Set in the near future, it is filled with vivid depictions of the threat of climate change. All around Liine, nature is facing acute drought and heat. No less menacing is the presence of an expanding NATO base close to the cottage at the Russian border. The world's largest military alliance is practicing for an attack. Explosions and shots ring in the distance while Liine tries to recover from fourteen years of violence. Yet she simply follows the rhythm of nature as summer unfolds. While her environment changes around her, Liine—always in the garden chopping wood, weeding, sowing—undergoes profound transformations, too. The Cut Line, masterfully translated by Darcy Hurford, is a story of fear, self-blame, grief, numbness, and anger ultimately giving way to hope and healing, joy and lightness.
Carolina Pihelgas is an Estonian writer, poet, translator, and editor. Her collection of prose poems The Light Within the Stone received the Estonian Cultural Endowment Award for the best poetry book of the year. In 2020, she was appointed Tartu’s City Writer Laureate. The author of seven collections of poetry, she published her first novel Watching the Night in 2022. The short novel The Cut Line, is her second work of prose and her first work to be translated into English.
The Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith
The Transnational Series focuses on stories of migration, the intersection of politics and literature, and works in translation and is supported by the independent bookstore Brookline Booksmith. Subscribe to the Transnational Series newsletter for information on upcoming events, book recommendations, and more.
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Event venue
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline, United States
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