Adam Georgiev

Adam Georgiev (born 4 July 1980, Prague) is a Czech poet and author of prose. He is most known as an author of homosexual prose; in 2010 he was declared by Czech Television to be the most sold gay author in the country.

For his book, Básník Trýzeň Kat/Poet Torment Executioner (2007), a collection of verses from 1997 to 2007, he received two nominations for the Book of the Year 2007 from a professional poll done by the Czech daily Lidové noviny. One of the nominations from this poll was from Eva Kantůrková, the president of the Academy of Czech Literature ("What attracted me was the defiant nature of the text, which resists not only the popular but also the literary mood of our day and age content with banality."); another nomination was from Mariusz Szczygieł, winner of the European Book Prize ("I didn't expect such metaphysics and spirituality after the death of Ladislav Klíma."). Dr. Alexej Mikulášek, literary theoretician, wrote about the book: "It is one of best to come out of Czech literature this past year."

As an author of prose, he became established with three books known as the "gay trilogy": Planeta samých chlapců /Christ Is Dancing (2008), Bulvár slunce/Boulevard of the Sun (2009) and Zabij mě, Eliso/Kill Me, Elisa (2009). They are characterized by their openness towards homosexuality, unprecedented not only in the Czech literary context, but elsewhere as well. Review of literary journal Literární noviny captured the trauma of gay society encoded in Georgiev's texts: "We are led to believe by Georgiev more often than not that gay people are not loved, that love is missing, that it is pushed away by sexuality." Excerpts from Boulevard of the Sun are included in the highly successful Czech anthologies, Kniha o čuráku/Book About a Dick and Kniha o mrdání/Book About Screwing (both published in 2009).

Georgiev shifted his later prose away from the statement of his distinctive generation towards works that were in terms of content and style more isolated. Part of these works are the fictitious letters from Paul Verlaine to Arthur Rimbaud in the book Arthure, ty děvko umění/Arthur, You Whore of Art (2010); winner of the Golden Globe Award, director Agnieszka Holland wrote the forward to this book and the Czech daily Právo wrote, "It is a testimony of bodily passion and literary creation." (12. 5. 2010) And above all, a part of these works is the dark and controversial novel about evil in the name of love, Třepetavý zvuk ptačích křídel/Fluttering Sounds of Birds Wings (2011), which deals with the relationship of a soldier and young lad. These texts are characterized by their moderation, and the author himself proudly describes them as literary minimalism.

Georgiev has also been successful in Poland where he was published by Krytyka Polityczna. At Jagiellonian University in Cracow a dissertation came about from his works in 2010. Mariusz Szczygieł wrote in the book, Zrób sobie raj/Make Yourself a Paradise, "Georgiev's books are about values." (page 127, ISBN 978-83-7536-223-7) Georgiev's works have also been translated into Bulgarian and partly into Dutch (University of Amsterdam). In 2013, the first translation into English was taken up (Planeta samých chlapců, entitled Christ Is Dancing).

During his short career, Georgiev has been compared several times at home and abroad to world-renowned authors. His style has been likened to "Kunderian poetics", "Gutiérrezian naturalism", and to the "fragmentation and rhythm of a later Beigbeder". Polish daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna wrote that Christ Is Dancing is "as if Almodóvar wrote We Children from Bahnhof Zoo". (13. 8. 2010)

In 2012, the Czech media's attention was piqued when Agnieszka Holland backed out from her original promise of christening Georgiev's social-critical prose Večeře u spisovatelky/ Dinner with the Authoress. The story unfolds on the backdrop of a relationship between a younger male author and an older female author, where the pre-Velvet Revolutionary and post-Velvet Revolutionary literary experience is sharply confronted.

"The famous American gay author Edmund White once said that church dogma is the building block of the myth of the gay victim. The goal of contemporary gay authors is to change this myth and together with it the dogma. Adam Georgiev – an inhabitant of "kingdom of atheism" which makes up the Czech lands – is one of the few authors fulfilling this goal. He is an author who isn't held back by sexuality."