Czech writer Zuzana Brabcová was born in Prague in 1959. In the 1980s she worked as librarian, cleaner and orderly at a Prague hospital, and later as an editor for the publishers Hynek, and then Garamond.  She is the author of four novels. Read More Daleko od stromu (Far from the Tree) was published in 1987 by the Cologne-based émigré press Index, and in 1991 by Československý spisovatel in Prague. It has been translated into German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, and received the Jiří Orten prize. Her next novel, Zlodějina(The Rip-Off), was published in 1995.  Rok perel (The Year of Pearls; 2000) has appeared in Croatian, Hungarian, Slovenian and Italian translations. Her most recent novel, Stropy (Ceilings, 2012), was awarded the most prestigious Czech Literary prize, Magnesia Litera, in 2013.