Michal Ajvaz is a Czech novelist, essayist, poet, and translator. In 2005, he was awarded the Jaroslav Seifert Prize for his novel Prazdne ulice (Empty Streets). He is a researcher at Prague's Center for Theoretical Studies. In addition to fiction, he has published an essay on Derrida, a book-length meditation on Borges, and a philosophical study on the act of seeing.
Gerald Turner has been translating modern Czech and Slovak writing forover thirty years. Prior to 1990 he translated, under the pseudonym ofA. G. Brain, many banned authors, including V�clav Havel, Karel Pecka,and Ludv�k Vacul�k. His translations include Europeana by Patrik Ouredn�k, for which he received the US PEN Translation Award in 2004.