Photo: Pavel Novak, Czech Radio
The Czech-Canadian émigré author and publisher Josef Škvorecký wrote his novels and stories on reams of paper. After his death in 2012, he left behind over 140 boxes of documents, manuscripts and personal correspondence, which he donated to the university library in Toronto. These are rarely shown to the public – but recently they were put on display during a conference for Czech teachers in North America.
The original writings and manuscripts of Josef Škvorecký are nowadays kept mostly in the library archives of the University of Toronto. John Shoesmith works at the university’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.
“This is the largest rare book library in Canada. We have somewhere along the lines of 800,000 volumes of books, 5,000 linear metres of manuscript material. The Škvorecký material is part of a large collection of archival material we have here of various Canadian writers – Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Sheila Heti.”
Shoesmith’s description of Škvorecký points to the fact that in Canada, he is largely considered to be a Canadian author, despite the fact that he is mostly published in Czech. Škvorecký spent half of his life in Canada, publishing Czech and Slovak books that were banned in Czechoslovakia during the communist era. He also taught literature, creative writing and film at the University of Toronto from 1971 until his retirement in 1990.
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Anna Fodor, Pavel Novák, Source:Czech Radio