My translations from Czech include novels by Zuzana Říhová, Magdaléna Platzová, Jáchym Topol, Bianca Bellová, Petra Hůlová, J. R. Pick, Tomáš Zmeškal, Josef Jedlička, Heda Margolius Kovály, Patrik Ouředník, and Miloslava Holubová. I have also Englished stories, plays, subtitles, young adult and children’s books, song lyrics, reportages, essays, poems, philosophy, art history, and an opera.
In September, Playing Wolf, my translation of the Zuzana Říhová novel Cestou špendlíků nebo jehel, “a devilishly creepy work of folk horror set in rural Czechia,” was published by Catapult. Order your copy here.
In August, The Dial magazine published the short story “The Cells,” my first published translation of work by Klára Vlasáková.
In March, Life After Kafka, my translation of Magdaléna Platzová’s novel Život po Kafkovi, was shortlisted for the EBRD Literature Prize 2025. Agniezska Holland said, “Magdaléna Platzová’s novel offers a new key to Kafka’s world: we look at it through the tender and sorrowful gaze of the people whose fate had been marked by him personally. An utterly touching book!” Order it here.
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Currently, I am seeking publishers for four novels: Biography of a Black-and-White Lamb, by Tomáš Zmeškal; Deathmaiden (winner of the European Union Prize for Literature; excerpt here), by Lucie Faulerová; and Cracks (about a levitating sphere whose inexplicable appearance rocks society on Earth; excerpt here) and Bodies (about mothers, daughers, and their bodies; excerpt available upon request), by Klára Vlasáková. For samples, synopses, and author bios, write alexz (dot) nyc (at) gmail (dot) com.
I also maintain a list of Czech literature translated into English, from 1987 to the present, at bit.ly/czechlitinenglish. (For works prior to 1987, see George J. Kovtun’s Czech and Slovak Literature in English. A Bibliography. Second Edition [searchable PDF].)
I am a founding member of the National Writers Union’s Literary Translators Division (previously, the Translators Organizing Committee), formed in 2023.