Alena Machoninová (1980) Czech Republic

scholar of Russian studies, translator, literary critic and writer

Alena Machoninová is a scholar of Russian studies, a translator, a literary critic, and the author of the award-winning essayistic auto-fiction novel Hella (2023). This story of Helena Frischerová, a Czechoslovak Jew living in the Soviet Union, which the author reconstructed from letters, photographs, and other “fragments”, won the Magnesia Litera Award for Book of the Year. Machoninová worked for many years as a lecturer at Moscow State University and has translated dozens of classic and contemporary works from Russian, but she was forced to leave the country and now lives in Prague.