Petra Hůlová

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Petra Hůlová (born 12 July 1979, Prague^[1]) is a Czech writer. She studied culturology at Charles University in Prague's Faculty of Philosophy and Arts.^[2]

Hůlová rapidly rose to popularity in 2002 through the publication of her novel Paměť mojí babičce (In Memory of my Grandmother), which became one of the most widely-read Czech books of the decade. The novel was set in Mongolia, where Hůlová had previously lived as an exchange student for one year; she is fluent in the Mongolian language.^[3] She stated that the novel, which is told from the point of five female narrators belonging to three generations of the same family, is actually based more on Czech people she knows and on Czech life, rather than her experiences in Mongolia. She chose to set the novel in Mongolia to avoid the necessity of writing about "artificial phenomena" such as career and media, by which she felt Mongolia had been less "polluted" than Europe; this allowed her to focus on writing about the basic feelings of her characters.^[4] The novel won the Magnesia Litera Prize in the category Newcomer of the Year, and was voted Book of the year by daily Lidové noviny. Her stay in the United States inspired her third book Circus Les Mémoires.^[5] By age 27, she had already published four novels.^[3]

[edit] Works

• In Memory of My Grandmother (Paměť mojí babičce)
• Přes matný sklo
• Circus Les Mémoires
• Umělohmotný třípokoj
• Stanice Tajga

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Extract from In Memory of My Grandmother