The Voices of Birds and other Plays by Josef Topol

About the Book

This is a book of five plays by Josef Topol translated into English, only two of which have been produced in the USA. Josef Topol and Vaclav Havel are considered the best Czech living playwrights. The five plays chosen for this volume are representative of Topol’s “chamber plays”, dealing with such universal themes as youth, love and parting, life and death – in language that is very contemporary and often incredibly poetic. The title of the book The Voices of Birds was chosen because it is the last play Josef Topol has written and indicates that the playwright’s newer works are included.

About the Author

Libuse Cacalova (married name Burjetka), author of several collections of contemplative lyrical poetry, is professionally a counseling therapist. She was born in Mikulov, Czechoslovakia. Three years after graduating from Masaryk University in Brno with a degree in psychology, and after realizing that she could not reconcile the fundamental differences between her striving for creative truth and freedom and that what the Communist regime had to offer, she left Czechoslovakia for the USA in 1977. She has made upstate New York her second home and lives there with her husband and daughter. Published Books: Touches, Executions and Resurrections, The Chord of Love, The Kingdom of Pebbles, The Upper Flow of Rivers ============================= Vera Borkovec is an Emerita professor from American University in Washington, DC. She has taught poetry, written poetry and translated poetry. After her retirement from AU’s Department of Language and Foreign Studies, she has devoted herself exclusively to literary translation (mainly poetry and dramatic works). For her translations from the Czech she was awarded in 2003 the Artis Bohemiae Amicis Medal by the Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic. Published Books: The Kingdom of Pebbles, Czech and Slovak Theatre Abroad, The Taste of a Lost Homeland, What if Ogden Could Speak Czech, The Voices of Birds and other Plays by Josef Topol, The Upper Flow of Rivers