If you follow our posts regularly, you may have noticed that, from time to time, we also highlight the individual research interests that many of our colleagues pursue alongside their bibliographic work. One of the names that has appeared more than once in this context is that of the writer Ota Filip.
Our colleague Anna Gnot has been engaged in long-term research on Filip’s work. Fortunately, she doesn’t keep her findings to herself – just two weeks ago (on 14 May 2025), she gave a lecture titled Possibilities and Limits of Cultural Memory Transfer: The Case of Ota Filip’s Novel “The Seventh Biography” at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem.
The lecture was part of a faculty-wide course open to the wider academic public. Anna focused not only on the broader context of Filip’s writing but also on the circumstances surrounding the creation – and the subsequent “life” – of his novel The Seventh Biography (2000). Attendees were introduced to the full genesis of the book: from the author’s work with archival documents, which he transformed into an autobiographical narrative, to the novel’s translation into several foreign languages.
