Petra Hlov's provocative novels, plays, and screenplays have won numerous awards, including the ALTA National Translation Award for Alex Zucker's translation of her debut novel, All This Belongs to Me, and she is a regular commentator on current events for the Czech press. She studied language, culture, and anthropology at universities in Prague, Ulan Bator, and New York, and was a Fulbright scholar in the USA. Her eight novels and three plays have been translated into thirteen languages. She used to define her writing as ""3G"": always working with topics of gender, generations, and geography. Her novels are often narrated in first person and range from intimate confessions to buoyant epic sagas. The Movement is her latest novel.
Praise for Petra Hulova Petra Hulova is one of the most distinctive and outspoken Czech writers of her generation. --Project Plume Praise for The Movement One part Animal Farm, one part The Handmaid's Tale, one part A Clockwork Orange, and (maybe) one part Frankenstein, Czech writer Hulova's novel dismantles the patriarchy and replaces it with a terrifying alternative...Hulova's provocative satire of a feminist future challenges and unsettles in equal parts. --Kirkus Reviews A thought-provoking and disturbing dystopian tale of a feminist revolution. --Publishers Weekly Hulova wants her readers uncomfortable, and succeeds beautifully, distorting and exaggerating admirable aspirations, asking what we are willing to sacrifice for a better society, and wondering what the New World should look like. --Calvert Journal With echoes of The Handmaid's Tale but putting the women in charge, The Movement beckons us into a brave new world where men are institutionalised and re-educated--by any means necessary--to value women's inner worth. The Movement challenges and unsettles, offering a candid glimpse of the underbelly of feminist utopia, and raising important ethical questions about how far we might want or have to go in order to secure a truly equal world. Hulova's distinctive voice is crystallised in Alex Zucker's fierce and flawless translation: this unapologetically provocative story is simultaneously a clarion call, a feminist manifesto, and a warning of the dangers lurking in both the old world and the new. --HELEN VASSALLO, Translating Women In a dystopian future where women rule, society is re-educated to teach men--and women--that women should be valued for traits other than their appearance or age. The novel is dark and satirical; while feminism is in the foreground, the author somehow manages a balancing act between manifesto and critique. --Lithub Hulova's story can be read primarily as a timeless fable about how the best of human intentions always end up paving the road to some totalitarian hell. --Dublin Review of Books Petra Hulova has managed to write a book which is committed in the best sense of the word: it unsettles, provokes, angers. It forces you to think while it also maintains a high literary standard. --MF DNES By setting her story in a dystopian world, Petra Hulova has created room for a narrative which goes far beyond today's discussions in society about equal rights and protection for women. --Aktualne.cz Petra is the first person I would give my pen to if she asked; Petra is a Pegasus, a creature of mythology; Petra has wings that let her fly above the people, cars, survey offices, social-welfare offices, beer tents, and double beds; she flies; then she types on her computer with her four hooves, pounding, beating, and asks herself: 'who are the people covering the sunlight?' Petra, Pegasus, I throw my pencil up in the air for you; fly along; fly. --ARMIN PETRAS, director of The Movement's German stage adaptation Praise for All This Belongs to Me A beautifully fluent translation that portrays each character in convincingly idiomatic English, and yet still manages to distinguish the five closely related main characters according to their individual temperaments. The story is compelling on personal and broader, political levels, the characters are deeply human, and their difficult choices are portrayed with great dignity. All in all, this is a book to be savored and treasured. --JURY, American Literary Translators Association, National Translation Award An acutely observed account. --Times Literary Supplement All This Belongs to Me invites us into this singular universe created by Petra Hulova, Mongolian but also abstract and timeless, and filled with memorable female characters that resonate with the readers. --World Literature Today Praise for Three Plastic Rooms Taboo-breaking. --Asymptote Journal A foul-mouthed Prague prostitute muses on her profession, aging and the nature of materialism. She explains her world view in the scripts and commentaries of her own reality TV series combining the mundane with fetishism, violence, wit, and an unvarnished mixture of vulgar and poetic language. --English PEN There is a build-up of intimacy amid the brutal and lyrical narration, attesting to Hulova's generosity in this portrait, devoid of satire and facile judgement ... A notable achievement. --Times Literary Supplement