Join us on Wednesday 4th March 2026 for an evening with the acclaimed Czech writer, scholar and translator, Zuzana Říhová.
The evening will be divided into two parts. First, as part of the Queen’s Translation Exchange’s Poetry in Translation Week, Zuzana will lead a discussion of the challenges of translating ‘The Talking Zone’ (1939) by Milada Součková, a poetic archiving of European culture as the continent descended into war and a rare example of inter-war Czech avant-garde poetry written by a woman. Then, after a short break, Zuzana will read from and discuss her novel, Playing Wolf, a disturbing contemporary horror/folk tale set in the Czech countryside, which was recently translated into English by Alex Zucker.
The event will be followed by a book signing and drinks reception in the Shulman Foyer, when independent Oxford bookshop Caper will also be selling copies of Playing Wolf.
About Zuzana Říhová
Zuzana Říhová is an acclaimed Czech author of academic studies, fiction and poetry. Her published research centres on the Czech avant-garde and modernism in wider European contexts, and in English includes the co-translation with Alex Zucker of ‘The Talking Zone’ (1939) by Milada Součková and the edited anthology From Laughter to Forgetting: A Sourcebook of Czech Avant-Garde Discourses (2025). Her second novel, Playing Wolf, was shortlisted for the top Czech fiction prize in 2022 and has been translated into several languages. She is a member of the Institute for Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Anglo-American University, Prague, and from 2014 to 2017 was tutor of Czech language and literature at the University of Oxford.
This event has been organised by The Queen’s Translation Exchange and Czech and Slovak Studies at Oxford.
