{"id":9704,"date":"2021-11-30T12:16:10","date_gmt":"2021-11-30T12:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/?page_id=9704"},"modified":"2021-11-30T12:22:40","modified_gmt":"2021-11-30T12:22:40","slug":"interview-with-monika-zgustova","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/interview-with-monika-zgustova\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Monika Zgustova"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n<\/div>\n\n

The plight of women, oppressive power and exile<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Interview with Monika Zgustova<\/strong><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Writer, translator and journalist Monika Zgustova has examined many subjects in her burgeoning body of acclaimed work, but thematically she said she often finds herself returning to deep explorations of women, oppressive power and the concept of exile.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI have always been drawn to writing deeply about women. And I have been always interested in using the topic of individual versus totalitarian power, in the USSR as well as in Czechoslovakia. This is one of my main interests. And the other one is exile because it was such a strong impact on me and my whole family. The experience of exile is in most of my books also. The one on Stalin’s daughter, which is called Roses from Stalin<\/em>, focuses on her exile, not so much her years when she was a child, although it is also present, but mainly how she coped with her exile. Most of my works are really based on the experience of exile and what led to it,\u201d Monika Zgustova said, speaking ahead of her appearance at the 6th<\/sup>\u00a0EU-China International Literary Festival.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

The concept is close to home. An exile herself, Zgustova\u2019s family fled the former Czechoslovakia for the United States when she was a teenager.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents thought they had to go into exile because of the ’68 experience when the Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia and Prague, our city. And after that, everything went in the wrong way, a way that my parents didn’t like at all. They didn’t want to live under the Soviets so they left for the United States through India. We were teenage kids when they did this in the mid ’70s, me and my brother,\u201d she said.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cAfter that we were happy because we got a good education in an American university. And after that we could kind of do with our lives whatever we wanted. We could design our own lives. I think it was my parents\u2019 experience, especially. Not my own because I left the country when I was 16, but my parents. And also my grandparents told me a lot about their experiences under Nazis and after that under Stalin and post-Stalinism.\u201d<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

The oppressive world Stalin created was something Zgustova got to revisit in her recent book, the critically acclaimed Dressed for a Dance in the Snow: Interviews with female intellectuals who survived the Gulags<\/em>.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cBefore starting this book I read many things about Stalin’s gulags but everything was about men, or most of the things were about men. So, I was really interested in what women\u2019s experiences were. And I had a friend, a Russian writer, who was in touch with women who had been in the gulags so he told me that I could come to Moscow and interview them. So that’s what I did about 10 years ago. And I talked to those women. Each of them was a little different. Each of them had a different outlook on life, and different expectations from life, but they had something in common. Most of them were students when they were detained and taken to the jail, and after that to the Gulag. So my book is about what they were doing before they were detained, during the detention and jail, and after that, how they coped with the gulag experience. And also what they did after they were let free from the gulag, what they did with their lives. Many of them, most of them wanted to be really useful to society. \u00a0One of them became a scientist, another one a nurse. I just exposed these stories, these women\u2019s stories, taking the reader by the hand.\u201d<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

While that book was a work of non-fiction, Zgustova usually prefers to work in the historical fiction form in her books.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI like to deal with these topics in a novel rather than a biography because I try to go inside their minds. I try to see how they function, what\u2019s in their minds, what their feelings are, what in their hearts. Because in a biography, you can learn a lot, but you have to imagine a lot. And I am a writer of fiction, mainly, so I like to imagine what their feelings are like,\u201d she said.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cBut I’m very much based on fact. I really search in archives and read everything I can. So I am very thorough about my preparation previous to my writing, which is part of the excitement for me.\u201d<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Zgustova has also worked extensively as a literary translator, translating more than 60 titles from Russian and Czech into Spanish and Catalan, an experience that helped form her as a writer, she said.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI studied comparative literature in the United States, and after that I wanted to come back to Europe. I chose Spain because I really fell in love with Barcelona. I’m still in love with Barcelona, that’s where I’m based now. I could see immediately that there weren\u2019t too many books translated from Czech into Spanish, or even less into Catalan. So, I thought that would be something interesting to do. And I was very young, I was reckless, and I thought that I could do anything, like some young people do. And so I started translating into a language which wasn’t my mother tongue. Since I was so young, I really learned the two languages quickly, even on the literary level,\u201d she said.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI was really passionately involved in translating. The author that I translated the most was Bohumil Hrabal. I thought that it would be worth maybe talking about him in a book so I wrote his biography. From there, when I started, once you start writing it’s like some kind of sweet poison enters your body. And you can\u2019t stop after that. Now I translate less and write more. From translation I went directly to writing And I think this may happen to many people.\u201d<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

But in order to get that \u201csweet poison\u201d that Zgustova refers to coursing through the veins, writers must read fervently, she believes.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI really think that reading is very, very important. It’s the most important thing. To me, for example, to give you an example, how did I start writing my book Roses from Stalin<\/em>\u00a0about Stalin’s daughter? It was my last day in New York City after like three or four weeks. I was working and enjoying myself. I was just walking on a street, and I could see some books exhibited on the sidewalk. I took one of them, it was an autobiography by Stalin’s daughter. So I immediately went in and bought it and took it with me on the plane. I didn’t sleep at night at all on the plane. I just read. And after reading her autobiography I had to start reading it again, and again, and I thought I’m being obsessed, what’s going on? And I realized that I had to get rid of this topic and of this obsession. I had to write about it,\u201d she said.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI was ill for about two or three months, so that was actually good because I could stay at home and be totally focused on my topic. I wrote about Svetlana, Stalin’s daughter, when she was in India, where she was scattering the ashes of her husband who had died in Moscow. I even cooked for myself Indian food in order to be in that environment. This is how I write, I really submerge myself into the atmosphere and the thing that I am writing about, I think this is the best because you really have to be obsessed to describe something in a convincing way so that the reader will be convinced. Otherwise it would be just superficial writing.\u201d<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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