Sněhuláku, sněhuláku / Laguna – Frameová Janet (2019)

The book introduces the Czech reader to the most famous New Zealand writer, Janet Frame. It includes the novella Snowman, Snowman and a collection of 24 stories titled Laguna. The twenty-four stories were written in the late 1940s. In 1951, at the time of its first publication, Janet Frame was living in the 'care' of New Zealand psychiatric hospitals, as she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. This debut won the most prestigious New Zealand literary award, The Hubert Church Prose Award, in 1951. In the mid-1950s, she was told at a London clinic that she did not suffer from schizophrenia - she was just an extremely withdrawn woman. Frame then settled in Britain for seven years. She is the author of 11 novels, five short story collections, and a book of poetry. As she says in her famous autobiography: 'My writing saved me.' The film An Angel at My Table is also based on the author's autobiographical trilogy. The film received the Jury Special Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1990. The imagery of her prose has the edge of poetry, yet it does not aim solely for aesthetic effect; it seeks meaning, does not shy away from irony, and peels away layers of forced facades - the dislocation of senses that results from this is nevertheless free from ego or self-pity. Frame knows how to conjure from the waters...