The first line on the back of the memoir Prague in My Bones tells us that author Jindra Tichý is one of the most influential Czechs living abroad. The academic, writer and author of 19 novels has been living in Dunedin for the past 35 years. How she got to be here and what she has been doing is the subject of a frank and fascinating book.
It’s true that in 2012, she was voted the 11th most influential Czech expatriate by the Czech public, but her influence has not been by way of any present-day social media. When we talk by phone the line gets too difficult and we resort to emailing questions. Her first email arrives back: “I just sent you the answers to your nice letter. I hope the computer delivered it. I have a new computer and sometimes it is disobedient and swallows my letters.”
A world-class philosopher and author, Jindra (pronounced “Yindra”) was forced to leave her beloved Prague 35 years ago. The book traces a remarkable life as a central European intellectual involved in the heady politics of in the 1960s, the invasion of Russia in the spring of ’68 and the choices she made as an academic and mother.
Among the many compelling passages in the book, there is one in which the determined Jindra sits down in a library just after arriving in England and begins to translate Jane Austen line-by-line in order to improve her English. She marvels at the “truths” the 19th century novelist could say and draws a parallel to Tolstoy and the way he too was able to use his work to reveal the underbelly and corruption in Russia.
Truth is something that is central to her book. Everything is laid bare with a frank honesty; her relationships, her friendships, the unconventional approach to monogamy that was de rigueur in
