Michal Ajvaz: Cities, Logos, Passages
– Czechia
Michal Ajvaz is a poet, writer and philosopher born in Prague in 1949. He is a graduate of Czech studies and Aesthetics at Charles University. During the post-1968 Czechoslovak Normalisation, he worked as a production floor worker, night-time parking lot guard and a water pumper. In his work, he spontaneously combines elements of magical realism, surrealism and the so-called postmodernism. As an author, he manages to transform any reality into a surreal, fictional wilderness and jungles flickering with phantom colours and unsuspected meanings. Ajvaz is a wanderer of imaginary towns and dream landscapes, a designer of fantastical places and beings, situations and stories. He has published over twenty books, most recently Passages (2024), The Dynamic Logos (2023) and Cities (2019).