Jakub Dotlačil: Cows, Sausages, Transformation
–Czechia
Born 1979 in Roudnice nad Labem. He did not complete his studies in Bohemian studies and Slovak studies at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University. He currently lives in the Netherlands, where he teaches linguistics at the University of Groningen. He is the author of the prose O kočičce Líze, která okoukla svět [Of Kitten Named Lisa Who Saw the World] (1985), Jiné životy Hynka Harra [Other Lives of Hynek Harr] (2014) and Až zhasneme [When We Go Out] (2019). About the third book, the publisher states on their website: “The main character Jan is studying Bohemian studies at a time when studying means nothing and the most important thing is to seize the opportunity. It is mainly seized by his uncle – one of the co-owners of a privatized meat processing plant in an unnamed North Bohemian town. Jan gets into the plant as a summer temporary worker. The meat grinder, which has live cows at the beginning and sausages at the end, is far from just a metaphor for the social changes of the period of transformation… "