I, Europe
Woman, Goddess, Continent
A woman sits in the cafe of a large, busy station. She drinks her coffee and watches her surroundings, curious yet reserved. Her name is Europa. And this is her story.
In her essayistic narrative, Lenka Horňáková-Civade presents Europe as a living being, the narrator of her own history, in which myth intertwines with reality, the past with the present, and literature with geography and philosophy. Europa, the mysterious woman in the station cafe, recalls being abducted by Zeus in the form of a white bull, explains why medieval geographers depicted her as a queen, and explores her own identity through the questions of the people who rush past her through the station hall, addressing her in different languages.
Lenka Horňáková-Civade
Lenka Horňáková-Civade (*1971) was born in Prostějov and studied at the Prague University of Economics and Business. After the Velvet Revolution, she moved to France, where she studied fine art at the Sorbonne in Paris, became a painter, and eventually started writing books, initially in Czech. However, she left behind her promising career as a Czech-writing author and embarked on the more uncertain path of writing in her second, adopted language, French. Her courage paid off, and she achieved success with both readers and critics. Argo has published reissues of her Czech books, 'Provence jako sen' (Provence as a Dream) and 'Lanýže' (Truffles), as well as her French titles in her own translation: 'Marie a Magdalény' (Marie and the Magdalenes), 'Grófka' (The Countess), 'Symfonie o novém světě' (Symphony of a New World), and 'Amsterodamské vigilie' (The Amsterdam Vigils). Together with the writer Anne Delaflotte Mehdevi, she published a book of correspondence, the second, revised edition of which was published by Argo under the title 'Praha–Paříž, Do vlastních rukou' (Prague–Paris, For Your Hands Only). She has received several literary awards (Prix Renaudot des lycéens, Prix Richelieux de la Francophonie, and Prix littéraire des jeunes européens) and in March 2022 was awarded the insignia of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ambassador in Prague. Lenka Horňáková-Civade lives in central France in the Centre-Val de Loire region.
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Format & type of protection
| Code: | EK62793 |
| Manufacturer information |
ARGO, spol. s r.o., Milíčova 13, Praha 3, Česká republika, 222 782 260, [email protected] 
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