The Náchod City Hall will announce a competition for a monument to Josef Škvorecký

Náchod - The Náchod Town Hall will announce an art competition for a statue of writer and exiled publisher Josef Škvorecký. The city wants to place a seated statue of the Náchod native, who died at the age of 87 in Toronto, Canada, in Masaryk Square. The decision to announce the competition was approved by the Náchod city council. Nina Adlof, spokesperson for the Náchod Town Hall, told ČTK today.
    "No date for announcing the art competition has been set yet; the conditions are currently being prepared," Adlof said. The Náchod city council also approved a public fundraising campaign, which the city wants to conduct to raise money to build the memorial. "The fundraising will be conducted from the day approved by the Regional Office of the Hradec Králové Region until the end of this year, in the form of collecting money into a pre-announced bank account and donation boxes," Adlof added.
    Náchod will also honor its native son with a memorial evening event, planned for February 9. There should also be a designated educational trail in the streets of Náchod tracing the footsteps of Josef Škvorecký. This year's edition of the Náchod Prima Season festival of student creativity will also be dedicated to the writer, which will take place in the city during the first week of May.
    Škvorecký, who was an honorary citizen of Náchod since 1990, last visited the city in 2004 on the occasion of his 80th birthday. At that time, a conference on Škvorecký's life and work was held in the city. Škvorecký depicted his youth spent in Náchod mainly in his most famous novel "The Cowards" and in the book "Prima Season." The most famous hero of Škvorecký's books is Danny Smiřický. A well-known café in the Beránek hotel is named after Smiřický.
    The writer left for Canada following the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, at the beginning of 1969. In Toronto, together with his wife, the writer and actress Zdena Salivarová, he founded Sixty-Eight Publishers, where they published works by authors who could not publish in communist Czechoslovakia.