About the Author

Novelist, playwright, film director, screenwriter, Vladislav Vancura was born in 1891 in Ha¡j (Silesia) into a family with ancestral roots in the nobility. A founding member of the Czech avant-garde artists group DevÄ>tsil in 1920, he served as its first chairman and was instrumental in formulating its Poetist program for literature. Vancura's most acclaimed work, Marketa Lazarova, brought him renown as an innovator of the first order and Czechoslovakia's State Prize for Literature in 1931. He was arrested on May 12, 1942, by the Gestapo, tortured, and executed on June 1, 1942.

Reviews

In a certain sense the novel is a milestone in Vančura's evolution. Just as scattered rays converge in a single golden strand in the lens of a magnifying glass, in Marketa Lazarova¡ Vančura's creative endeavors converge in a single, undivided stream.
- Milan Kundera

Using the narrator to give his clear and not always objective views on what is going on and at times jumping ahead or back in time, we get a fascinating modernist take on a medieval romance (in both senses of the word).
- The Modern Novel