On the occasion of the 130th birthday of the Czech writer Karel Čapek, the Czech Center in Rotterdam organizes a debate in cooperation with OBA, the Embassy of the Czech Republic in the Hague and the Czech Center Brussels.

Thanks to the timeless themes, Karel Čapek's books and ideas are still very topical. His visionary books show many parallels with the world of today (artificial intelligence, robotization, pandemic, power politics).  The Dutch reader has been able to become acquainted with Čapek in recent years thanks to translations by Irma Pieper, Kees Mercks and Edgar de Bruin.

When: Thursday, August 27, 2020, 7:00 PM

Where: Online via the Facebook page of the Czech Center

Moderator: Michel Krielaars

Speakers: Ewoud Kieft, Kees Mercks, Eric Metz

Language: Dutch

Michel Krielaars is a journalist and writer. He studied history and Russian at the UvA. Mr. Krielaars  works in NRC  and previously was a correspondent in Moscow for many years. In 2015, he won the Bob den Uyl Prize for his travel book Het brilletje van Chekhov . He is a fan of Bohumil Hrabal and writes reviews on the translations of the  Czech literature.

Ewoud Kieft is a writer, historian and musician. He studied history at the VU Amsterdam and obtained his PhD with a thesis on the radicalization of intellectuals in Europe before 1914 at Utrecht University and the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD). He  also wrote War Enthusiasm. Europe 1900-1918 (2015), about the desire for war at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Het Verboden Boek (2017), about the appeal of Mein Kampf and Nazism. His acclaimed debut novel De imperfectten was recently released on artificial intelligence and the relationship between man and machine. Kieft regularly writes articles for NRC.

Kees Mercks was associated with the UvA for many years as a teacher of Czech literature. He has translated work by Karel Čapek, Jaroslav Hašek, Václav Havel, Bohumil Hrabal, Ivan Klíma, Božena Němcová, Josef Škvorecký, Ludvík Vaculík, Jiří Weil. He received the Aleida Schot Prize and the Martinus Nijhoff Prize for his translations.

Eric Metz has been associated with the UvA as a lecturer in translation studies and Slavic languages ​​and cultures since 2011. He writes  mainly about Russian modernist poetry and in his spare time he translates poetry and short prose by Russian, Czech, Polish and Ukrainian authors. He  translated works by Fráňa Šrámek, Richard Weiner, Petr Borkovec and Petra Hůlová from Czech to Dutch.