A lack of apartments has been holding back the capital for some time. Protracted and inadequate construction work, particularly in recent years, has led to a sharp rise in property prices and rents. The development of the shared economy is pushing private housing out of the city centre. Alongside apartments in commercial projects beyond the price range of the average young family and the limited range of social housing set aside for the most disadvantaged, there is a crying need for the development of apartment projects for the middle-income group on the cooperative principle and with municipal support. Could this help lead to more affordable flats becoming available? Is the city prepared to support such projects? Can some use be made of the sharp fall in demand for short-term rentals sparked by the Covid-19 crisis, bringing Praguers back to apartments in the downtown area, if nothing else?

At this traditional meeting under one roof of publishers and readers, we will offer you an invigorating cocktail of titles, both new and tried and tested.

In terms of content, style and overall impression, Popelnicový roman (The Dustbin Novel) is a unique achievement in contemporary Czech prose. Genuinely post-modern, it draws on countless references, allusion, persiflage and pastiche and represents a devastating grimace over the pre-1989, immediately post-1989 and contemporary Czech periods. Just like Jaroslav Hašek with his Švejk, with this novel Vladimír Merta abandons psychology and the realistic description of characters. For him they are mere figurines in a game serving to highlight that which is nonsensical, embarrassing, ridiculous – and at the same time nightmarish. Merta’s chief narrative devices are humour, jokes, hyperbole, irony and sarcasm. This is not a book to be read once but a prose volcano that threatens to bury the reader in carefully targeted, chilling humour.

Discussion with editors from the weekly Respekt and their guests on a topical issue. More information and the names of guests will be published prior to the event at www.vaclavhavel.cz

The Václav Havel Library will have a stand at the Bratislava book festival for the first time, introducing its publishing programme, including hot new titles. For more information visit www.brakfestival.sk

Guerilla Records is an independent music label based in Louny that for virtually 20 years has been working at the coalface of music and poetry rooted in the so-called underground. It traces the work, and frequently also the lives, of artists active in the here and now, showing that in every era and every system there are many artists whose workflows from their own convictions and internal tensions.

The leading contemporary Czech writer Jan Novák detonated a bomb on the domestic literary scene in June, with his monograph simply entitled Kundera setting off an avalanche or responses, from negative to highly enthusiastic. It has been the most discussed book in this country in many years, if not ever.

What role does the individual play in society? And what is the value of personal courage in a time of repression? Why is it important today to remember extraordinary lives? Attempting to answer those questions is the book Jen jsme šli kolem (We Were Just Passing) (CPress, Albatros media, 2020) by journalist and head of the organisation Elpida Jiří Hrabě – and guests at this discussion evening will also thrash them out.

A screening of a documentary by Juraj Herz that is virtually unknown in this country. It features President Václav Havel in conversation with the Oscar-winning actor Maximilian Schell about his vision for the millennium, which remains pertinent to this day.

Though Belarus is on the eastern border of the European Union, it remains an unknown country to the bloc’s citizens. It only makes the newspapers when its authoritarian leader decides to ignore a pandemic or plays at elections that are in fact nothing of the sort. The regime responds hysterically, censorship is in full effect and opposition names are struck off electoral lists in advance or end up in jail before they have even tried to protest.

Subjects related to T.G. Masaryk have undergone numerous changes since 1989. The anniversaries of 2017–2020 (80 years since TGM’s death in October 2018, the 170th anniversary of his birth in March 2020) have boosted interest once again and sparked the creation of many popularizing, commercial and academic works on Masaryk. His image and legacy have been brought up to date via texts, films and artworks. Efforts at authenticity and originality of approach have frequently been accompanied by a search for new forms and alternative presentations.

Monika Zgustová, a Czech writer and translator into Spanish and Catalan (she has translated over 50 works by leading Czech authors) living in Barcelona since the 1980s, will introduce one of her most recent works at the point where the novel and non-fiction overlap, Oblečené k tanci na sněhu (Dressed for Dancing in the Snow). It offers an authentic account of nine “strong, astute and brave” women who came into conflict with one of the most terrifying totalitarian regimes in human history but were unbroken and succeeded in returning to at least partially normal Soviet life.

They have no homes yet wish to contribute to society. What links the organisations Kuchařky bez domova (The Homeless Cooks), Pragulic (Prague Street) and Přestupní stanice (Transfer Station)? They are places that transform lives, providing people without homes with jobs and support. Come and learn about the origins of these innovative projects that bring those with nowhere to live back into society, highlight the issue of homelessness, combat prejudice and bring those without and with homes together.

From Karel Havlíček Borovský to Václav Havel.