Veronika Bendová: The land and injustices
– Czechia
Veronika Bendová was born in Prague in 1974. She studied screenplay and dramaturgy at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague. She has published two books of prose: Nonstop Eufrat (2012) and Vytěženej kraj (The Mined-Out Land, 2019). The journalist and critic Jan M. Heller wrote the following about her second book: “A land marked by recent historical events and a couple of people marked, deep inside, by the injustices they’ve done to each other. That is the setting of Veronika Bendová’s novella in brief. However, the book doesn’t merely deal with relationships – it critiques the process of creating ‘mythologies’ of ‘harsh lands’ and the harm art can ultimately do to them and their inhabitants.”