I Caught Sight of My Face - Hardcover

by Petr Hruska (Author), Joshua Mensch (Translator)

An English translation of Petr Hruska's poetry book Spatril jsem svou tvár (2022), awarded with Magnesia Litera, the most prestigious annual literary award in the Czech Republic.

"This is a kind of poetics where precision of lyricism attains a meaning that crosses the boundary of language. And for that, I am grateful." -- Ilya Kaminsky, contemporary poet and author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

Petr Hruska is widely considered one of the most important Czech poets.

Based on 'The First Voyage around the World', written exactly 500 years earlier by Antonio Pigafetta, Hruska's I Caught Sight of my Face turns the glorious saga of Magellan's voyage of discovery into an unsettling exploration of human behavior, showing how man remains an anxious, insecure, sometimes cowardly, evil, xenophobic and violent being.

It is an uncomplicated, yet at the same time, deeply profound book, brought to life through illustrations by Jakub Spaňhel (1976), an acclaimed contemporary Czech visual artist, who creates an interesting dialogue between the text and its visual accompaniment.

Author Biography

Petr Hruska (1964) is a poet and literary historian who lives in Ostrava, Czech Republic. His poetry has won several state and international awards, including the Czech State Award for Literature in recognition of his collection Darmata (To No Travail, 2012) and Magnesia Litera, the most prestigious annual literary award in the Czech Republic, for his collection Spatřil jsem svou tvář (I Caught Sight of My Face, 2022). Collections of Hruska's poetry have been translated into French, German, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, Romanian, and Croatian.