After a summer break, the Nordic Literary Salon online is back in September. Translator Magdalena Jírková will introduce a novel by Danish author Annette Bjergfeldt Mr Saito’s Traveling Cinema which was published in Czech this year by Host. We will discuss dancing tango shoes, life escapades and love in all its forms with moderator Hana Švolbová.
You can watch the live stream on Thursday 12. September 2024 from 20:00 on our Facebook page Scandinavian House. A recording will be available later on our YouTube account.
In Czech.
Mr Saito’s Traveling Cinema (published by Host, 2024) is Annette Bjergfeldt’s second book that got translated to Czech. When someone leaves a baby inside a shoe box at the steps of a Buenos Aires monastery, the nuns name the baby Fabiola. The defiant Fabiola soon shows an unconventional talent – she can find the perfect pair of shoes for anyone. She becomes the best shoe seller in town as well as – to the nuns’ dismay – a mother to Lita, a girl as headstrong as Fabia.
The revolutionary times force the mother and her child to flee Argentina, but their dream of Europe soon dissolves, and they find themselves in a small windy island near Canada, where they move into lodgings for sailors called Bethlehem. Many eccentric characters hide inside the beating heart of the island – among them is the hostess’s deaf daughter Oona, who soon becomes Lita’s best friend. While Lita attempts to find her footing in her new surroundings, her fate is drastically changed by the yearly visit of Mr Saito’s traveling cinema, which brings moving pictures from the whole world to the isolated island.
Annette Bjergfeldt (born 1961) is a Danish songwriter, singer, and author. She resided in the United States for many years, where she did concerts and wrote music for other singers. She also draws and organizes workshops for singers. Bjergfeldt wrote a book on music composition and three books for children. The rights for her novel debut When Life Gives You Hippos (Robert Novotný’s Czech translation was published by Host) were sold to eighteen countries.
Magdalena Jírková has been working with the Danish language for longer than thirteen years. She started out with commercial and technical translations, interpreting in factories and guiding Danish tourists. She most enjoyed her collaboration with LEGO, when she, as an interpreter, helped with the move of manufacture from Denmark to the Czech Republic, and because of that she knows more about plastic cubes than she ever would have guessed. She came upon literary translation by chance when she filled in for her colleague who was on maternity leave. Her first translation was a huge challenge. She was to translate A Conspiracy of Faith, the third book in the famous Department Q series by Jussi Adler-Olsen, and the stakes were high. She soon found out that she constantly learns new things thanks to literary translation, which she enjoyed immensely. But translating literature isn’t enough to live on, so she still does commercial translations, interpretation, and guided tours, and each of those jobs allows her to rest from the others. She enjoys traveling in her free time, and preferably to the less travelled destinations. She recently enjoyed Faroe Islands.
The partners of the Nordic Literary Salon online are the Czech Translators of the North – an association that brings together translators of fiction from Northern languages to Czech. The event is part of the Scandinavian House’s year-long project Nordic Literature in the Heart of Europe 2024 which is supported by the City of Prague and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
