Náchod announced a competition for a bench dedicated to the writer Josef Škvorecký

Náchod - Náchod has announced a competition for a bench in honor of the writer Josef Škvorecký, which should commemorate the famous native of Náchod in the city center. The municipality will accept proposals until May 2, as informed by the spokesperson of the Náchod city hall, Nina Adlof. Škvorecký passed away in January 2012 at the age of 87 in Toronto, Canada.
    "The reason for announcing the competition is to obtain a proposal for a touristically interesting reminder of Josef Škvorecký, in the form of a realistic statue in a typical sitting posture on a bench, which we want to place in Masaryk Square," stated Náchod's deputy mayor Tomáš Šubert. The city expects that the costs for the realization of the winning proposal will not exceed 850,000 crowns.
    The competition conditions state that it should be a statue of Škvorecký at approximately 60 years of age, and it should include an information board with basic details. The material of the statue must be as resistant as possible to damage and vandalism, and the bench should have space for two other people in addition to the seated statue. According to the conditions, the entire work should be completed and placed in the square no later than July 30, 2014.
    Škvorecký depicted his youth spent in Náchod primarily in his most famous novel "The Cowards" and in the book "Prima Season." Since 1990, he has been an honorary citizen of Náchod. The writer last visited the town in 2004 on the occasion of his 80th birthday. At the beginning of 1969, he moved to Canada. In Toronto, together with his wife, writer and actress Zdena Salivarova, he founded Sixty-Eight Publishers, where they published works by authors who could not publish in Communist Czechoslovakia.