A novel about the photographer František Drtikol.
Have you ever wondered what a story written by a beam of light would be like? Firstly, the story would be ordinary but the course of events extraordinary; secondly, its hero would be a photographer, a guardian of light; thirdly, naturally, it would be full of shadow. So who was František Drtikol? A dandy from a small mining town, a world-famous photographer whose business went bankrupt, a master of the nude who never had much luck with women, a mystic and a Buddhist who believed in communism, a man of many contradictions. The conception of Jan Němec’s extensive novel is very unusual for contemporary Czech prose – fresco-like, it is an artistic and spiritual Bildungsroman that covers over half a century, bringing to life the silver mines of Přibram, Jugendstil Munich and First Republic Bohemianism, with naked models wandering along the lines and light merging unobserved with knowledge...
This project has been funded with support from the Creative Europe Programme of the European Commission.
Jan Němec, born in 1981 in Brno, received his MA degree in Religious and Social Studies from Masaryk University in Brno, and in Theatre Dramaturgy from the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno. He wrote a book of poems První život (First Life, 2007), followed by a book of short-stories Hra pro čtyři ruce (Playing Four Hands, 2009) and a biographical novel about renowned photographer František Drtikol, called Dějiny světla (A History of Light, 2013). Němec works as an editor for the monthly literary magazine Host, and as a dramaturgist for the ČT Art TV channel.
* The website www.colibri.bg is optimized 
