Tomáš Zmeškal & Hamid Ismailov in conversation with Misha Glenny

Acclaimed Czech author Tomáš Zmeškal and his Uzbek counterpart based in London Hamid Ismailov will read from their work and discuss literature and politics with writer and former Central Europe correspondent for Guardian and BBC, Misha Glenny.

Tomáš Zmeškal’s debut novel Love Letter in Cuneiform is a family saga - a story of marriage, love and destiny set in Czechoslovakia between the 1940s and 1990s. Josef meets his wife, Květa, before the WWII at a public lecture and she marries him instead of their mutual friend Hynek. But when her husband is arrested and unlawfully imprisoned, Květa gives herself to Hynek in return for help and advice. Exploring what is not spoken, what cannot be said and the repercussions of silence, Zmeškal's tale, told as a mosaic of events, exposes the larger, ongoing struggle of post-communist Eastern Europe to come to terms with suffering when catharsis is denied.

Hamid Ismailov’s latest book The Dead Lake, long-listed for the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, is a haunting Russian tale about environmental legacy of the Cold War. It tells a story of a gifted violinist Yerzhan growing up on the Kazakh steppes, the Soviet test ground for atomic weapons. Yerzhan falls in love with the neighbour’s daughter and to impress her, he dives into a forbidden lake. Its radioactive water stops his growth and he becomes trapped in a boy’s body while the girl he loves grows into a beautiful woman. Drawing attention to atomic tests taking place between 1945 and 1989 in Kazakhstan, Ismailov creates a parable of modern arms race impacting on people’s lives and tradition.

Tomáš Zmeškal (b.1966) left Czechoslovakia in 1987 for London. He studied English language and literature at King’s College but returned to Prague after the collapse of communism in 1998 to work as a lecturer, translator, interpreter and teacher of creative writing. He has published two novels, one work of literary non-fiction, radio plays and short stories. He has won the EU Prize for literature for his debut novel Love Letter in Cuneiform.

Born in 1954 in Kyrgyzstan, Hamid Ismailov moved to Uzbekistan as a young man. He writes both in Russian and Uzbek and his novels and poetry have been translated into many European languages, including German, French and Spanish. In 1992 he was forced to flee to the UK because of his ‘unacceptable democratic tendencies’. He now works for the BBC World Service.

Part of The Stories We Tell: 2016 European Literature Festival, organised by EUNIC London, initiated and coordinated by the Czech Centre.