Thirty years after his first reading at Harbourfront Centre, Josef Škvorecký presents his new novel,
Ordinary Lives, and is interviewed by S. Randy Boyagoda. Alison Pick hosts.
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Writer, critic and scholar Randy Boyagoda is a professor of literature at Ryerson University in Toronto. His first novel, Governor of the Northern Province, was published in 2006 and received a nomination for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In addition to appearing frequently on CBC Radio, he writes for publications including Harper’s and the Walrus. His second novel, Beggar's Feast, which is set in Sri Lanka, will be published in 2011.
Alison Pick is the author of the novel The Sweet Edge, a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book, optioned for film by Four Seasons Productions, and of two poetry collections, Question & Answer, and The Dream World.
Josef Škvorecký was born in Czechoslovakia in 1924. While in Czechoslovakia, Škvorecký published several books, not all of which were accepted by the Communist Party, and wrote numerous scripts for feature films. He and his wife left for Canada in 1968 where he went on to win the Governor General’s Literary Award in 1984. Škvorecký presents his first novel in a decade, Ordinary Lives, in which he returns to the fertile territory of his earlier fiction, his native Czech Republic, and to his old narrator and alter ego, Danny Smiricky.
