Alena Machoninová, Hella (Nakladatelství Maraton, 2023)
Alena Machoninová´s debut Hella (2023) can be read as an atlas of memory, a poetic travelogue, or a melancholic reconstruction of the elusive life of a woman whom most people know only as a literary character. This reconstruction intertwines with references to other works of fiction and essays that relate to traumatic narratives, the archiving of memory, experiences of terror and violence, or texts that have simply moved the author for one reason or another (Platonov, Shalamov, Stepanova, Benjamin, Sontag). Machoninová deliberately merges literary memory with personal memory – Weil’s, Platonov’s, or Hella’s Moscow is also her Moscow. The refined language and precise formulations, infused with poetic ease yet grounded in thorough research, represent a unique authorial gesture in contemporary Czech prose.
Alena Machoninová is a Czech author and translator. She worked at the Moscow State University as a lecturer in Czech language and literature. She writes and lectures on 20th and 21st century Russian literature, focusing primarily on unofficial Soviet poetry and contemporary prose. Together with Jan Machonin, she compiled and translated an anthology of poets from the Lianozovo school, “Thieves of Everyday Moments” (2015). She is the author of afterwords to prose works by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Andrei Bitov, Helena Frischerová, Tamara Petkevich, Andrei Platonov, Mariya Stepanova, Oksana Vasyakina, and others; she has also translated some of these books. In 2024, her literary debut “Hella” was awarded as a Czech Book of the Year in the prestigious Magnesia Litera award.
International Visegrad Fund, Národní institut pro kulturu, Slovenské literárne centrum, MNMKK – Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum
