Pupek světa a slinivka břišní - Pražské povídky – Fischerová Sylva (2026)

This Czech-language collection of Prague stories follows Sylva Fischerová’s book of Prague poems, A Church for Smokers. Its motto, taken from Ivan Diviš, describes a land that believes itself to be the navel of the world, though it is really its pancreas, an organ best left untouched, and this applies both to the country and its capital. The stories present Prague images and tales, from iconic subjects such as a Lego model of the Old Town Square in Prague to less iconic scenes, including a company party on a steamer on the Vltava. They range across Greater Prague, including Zbraslav and Točná, Prague’s literary life, past lives recounted by a Prague hairdresser, and the familiar question of where Žižkov ends and Vinohrady begins. There is also a treatise on cracks and a character who dreams at night of a blue lens. The book is not always easy reading, because this mother city has claws, and so do its inhabitants. Through varied narrative strategies, the stories portray Prague and the changing nature of its genius loci in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries from different perspectives. In one passage, Kafka explains the Last Judgment to Einstein as martial law, while another narrator leaves a train immediately after seeing the station sign PRAHA-ŠTĚNICE, despite originally travelling elsewhere. As the final line says: “Wosud is an iron priest.”