
Genre: Novel
Pages: 648
Year of publication: 2008
Published by: Host
ISBN: 978-80-7294-288-6
Buy the book: Host
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A documentary novel about Petr Lébl, theatre director, stage designer, actor, and former art director of the Divadlo Na Zábradlí theatre.
Magnesia Litera Prize in the category of non-fiction.
The book about Peter Lébl (1965–1999), on which the author had been working for several years, is an attempt at the unique monograph of a theater director, stage designer, actor, and former art director of the Divadlo na Zábradlí theatre. At the same time, however, it is an attempt to map the life of an unhappy young man and the time he lived in. The book is not only a story of Lébl’s theatrical work: it captures the transformations of the period’s perception of theatre and art in a wider context, but it is also a chronicle of the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first century. Of the times which catapulted Lébl into the glare. Denemarková, however, also asks the question whether this was just a “puffy bubble” which emerged after desolate and ideologically uncompromisingly shaped years, or perhaps something of a major controversial way of work has survived to this day. She is even leaning towards extreme thesis that Lébl’s bold and elusive “image” was perhaps “more remarkable” than the work itself.
Awards
2009 MAGNESIA LITERA PRIZE for the best book in the category of non-fiction
2009 nominated for JOSEF ŠKVORECKÝ PRIZE
2009 mentioned in Lidové noviny opinion poll BOOK OF THE YEAR 2009 (Viola Fischerová)
From the jury’s reasoning
- Czech Television broadcasting, ČT1, 17. 3. 2009 (video)
From the reviews
Foreign editions
- Rights sold to: Slovenia: KUD Police Dubove – for 2019