Event Highlights: European Voices: A Reading & Conversation with Magdalena Platzova
On Thursday, September 15th, Boston University’s Center for the Study of Europe welcomed Czech author Magdaléna Platzova and translator Alex Zucker. The event was moderated by Veronika Tuckerova, Preceptor in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University.
Platzova is the award-winning author of six books, two of which have since been translated and published in English: Aaron’s Leap and The Attempt, a Lidové Noviny Book of the Year Award finalist and a Czech Book Award finalist respectively. Her other works have also appeared in literary magazines A Public Space and Words Without Borders. She has studied in Washington D.C., England, and ultimately got her MA in Philosophy at Charles University in Prague. She has since taught at the Gallatin School at New York University.
Alex Zucker is an award-winning translator of Czech literature. He has translated many prominent Czech authors into English, and he currently serves as the cochair of the PEN America Translation Committee.
Platzova’s most recent book, The Attempt, is based on the lives of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, a pair of leading political activists and anarchists, and is told through the archival lens of a Czech historian who is convinced he is Berkman’s great-grandson. The novel takes place when this historian travels to Manhattan during the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement, tying together themes of personal transformation and radical politics.
A poignant example of historical fiction, The Attempt gives an entirely new meaning to the idea of an anarchist. “The anarchist thing was very interesting to people,” details Platzova. “There are some young anarchists who … were happy someone was finally writing in a positive way about their ideas.”
“Even there [in the Czech Republic], their ideas are mostly interpreted and perceived as something bad, as chaos, or stealing and murdering,” she explains. “There’s this primitive interpretation of anarchist ideas.”
It is no coincidence that the novel took place in New York City, since Platzova was living in New York at the time of the novel’s conception. “It was destructive … in New York, but on the other hand it made me more daring than I would be closed in Central Europe, thematically and for perspective,” reflects Platzova. “It couldn’t have been written anywhere else.”
In addition to being an award-winning author, Platzova is also something of a detective, using her skills in research and journalism to uncover both history and history in the making. “I was reading all this history, thinking, why do people keep silent? Why are they not doing anything? … And then, [Occupy Wall Street] happened.”
“After Occupy Wall Street ended in the way it ended, I realized it was also the frame of my book; that all these ideas are going on. They are living on.”
-Toria Rainey ‘18
Watch the event on YouTube: