Archipelago translator Stacey Knecht has published an insightful piece on her connection with Hrabal and his work on the blog Slavische Studies:

Admittedly, I first began to study Czech because I wanted to read Hrabal’s work in the original. The English translations I’d read seemed to tug in all the wrong places. Something was being glossed over, fleshed out, overcompensated for. Somewhere beneath all that was the voice and pulse of the author, I could feel it, but without knowing the original I couldn’t say what it was.

Read the whole post here.