The time: the 1990s. The place: Prague’s Žižkov district. A neighbourhood where hopelessness, drugs, alcohol and fights are normal. Growing up in the local Roma community means you are destined to be just another misfit. However, the story of journalist Patrik Banga is strikingly different. It captures his life’s journey, starting with his poverty-stricken childhood in the Roma quarter, and ending with him becoming a journalist in the Czech media. Banga's raw and very open style depicts the reality of a teenage boy who encounters rejection, criminalisation, racism, and police brutality at an early age. And he’s looking for the true way out.
Author bio:
Patrik Banga is a journalist, musician and IT entrepreneur. He has been working in the newsroom of iDNES.cz, a news portal, since 2007. He has also worked as a reporter for Czech Television’s flagship evening news programme. Patrik is one of the makers of the documentary film The Ghetto as a System / Ghetto jako systém (2012). His blog attracts over one million visitors. His first book, Skutečná cesta ven, was published in 2022 and won the Magnesia Litera award for best debut. He lives in Prague.
Translator bio:
Isabel Stainsby is a translator from Czech, Slovak, German and occasionally French into English. She studied languages and linguistics at Cambridge and Bristol, with a year in the Czech city of Olomouc and time in Germany and Russia, then tried out various careers before becoming a freelance translator. She has translated eight books, plus a number of chapters and articles, and is looking to translate more. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland, with her husband and a very spoiled greyhound. Follow Isabel on Facebook: @isabeltranslates or bluesky: @isabeltranslates
Buy the book: https://ceeolpress.com/book/34#gsc.tab=0