Monika Zgustová

Monika Zgustová (22 March 1957, Praha) is a Czech writer and translator. She is a key figure in the introduction of Czech literature in Spain, translating into Spanish and Catalan.

Biography

She studied comparative literature at the University of Illinois in the 1970s. Since the 1980s, she has lived in Barcelona.

She is the translator of many major works of Czech fiction; she has translated more than fifty books from Czech and Russian into Spanish and Catalan, including works by Bohumil Hrabal, Jaroslav Hašek, Václav Havel, Jaroslav Seifert, Milan Kundera, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Isaac Babel, Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva. She regularly writes articles and editorials for El País (Spain), La Vanguardia (Spain), The Nation (USA), and Lidové Noviny (Czech Republic).

Zgustova's most acclaimed books are The Silent Woman (2005), a novel which encompasses three generations of Czechs, Russians and Americans, and Roses from Stalin (2015), a novel based on Stalin's daughter Svetlana's life story.

Zgustova has been praised internationally since 2005 and her works have been translated into nine languages. She has received more than 10 awards and honors.

Works

Novels

• Roses from Stalin (2015)
• The Bitter Fruit of the Garden of Delights: Life and Work of Bohumil Hrabal (2014)
• Valya's Night (2013)
• The Silent Woman (2013, Feminist Press, ISBN 9781558618411) Original Czech title Tichá žena
• Fresh Mint with Lemon (2013)
• Goya's Glass (2012, Feminist Press, ISBN 9781558617971)
• Winter Garden (2009)
• The Good Soldier Švejk (2005)

Short Stories

• Absent Moon (2010)

• "Catalogue record: The Silent Woman". Worldcat. Retrieved 11 May 2016. 
• "Catalogue record: Goya's Glass". Worldcat. Retrieved 11 May 2016.