Hana Andronikova

Hana Andronikova is one of the best known young Czech writers at work today. Born in 1967 in Zlín, she went on to study English and Czech literature at Charles University. Her first novel, The Sound of the Sundial, was published in 2001 to great acclaim, receiving the Book Club Literary Award and the 2002 Magnesia Litera Award.

A mature, cultivated, and intensely readable work, the novel spans from a small Czech town to 1930’s India, a Nazi concentration camp, and contemporary America, telling the story of the fatal romance between an engineer named Tomaš Keppler and a young Jewish girl named Rachel, narrated by their son Daniel.

“A couple of months later, in November '32, we set out together on the route to the sun. The ship sailed from Marseilles, the Monarch of Bermuda. Lavish evening parties, long dresses and dancing. A conjuror and a ventriloquist... Sails bellied in the gathering wind and the waves grew bigger and more terrifying. The heavens clouded over and the horizon disappeared.”

Andronikova’s book of short stories, Heart on the Hook, cemented her reputation as an emerging force in the Czech literary scene.

Hana Andronikova died at the age of 44.