Jakuba Katalpa

Jakuba Katalpa was born Tereza Jandová in 1979 in Plzeň, in what was then Czechoslovakia.[1][2][3] She studied psychology, media studies, and Czech studies at Charles University in Prague, graduating in 2005.[3]

Jandová's first published work was the 2000 short story collection Krásné bolesti ("Lovely Pain"), followed by the collection Povídka beze jména ("Story Without a Name") in 2003. She subsequently began writing novels under the pen name Jakuba Katalpa.[1]

The first of these, the novella Je hlína k snědku? ("Can Mud Be Eaten?"), was published in 2006. It was shortlisted for the Magnesia Litera Discovery of the Year Award. She then wrote her first full-length novel, Hořké moře ("Bitter Sea"), in 2008. Perhaps her most personal work, it was shortlisted for the Jiří Orten Award for young writers.[1][2][4]

In 2012, Katalpa published Němci ("Germans"), which would become her most popular work.[2] Němci won the Czech Book Award and the Josef Škvorecký Award, and it was nominated for the Magnesia Litera Award for Prose.[1][5] It tells the story of a Czech woman living in London who travels to search for her estranged German grandmother.[5] While much of her earlier work was experimental, Němci is characterized by its realism.[2] The title, Němci, is the Czech word for "Germans," but the term derives from the word "mute," a reference to the tense silence around the Czech Republic's history with Germany.[5]

After writing the novel Doupě ("The Den") in 2017,[6] in 2020 Katalpa published the novel Zuzanin dech ("Zuzana's Breath"), which also deals with the tensions of life in the Sudetenland. It tells the story of the daughter of a Jewish sugar factory owner during the Holocaust.[4]