Czech writer Markéta Pilátová visited Cairo to present her book With Baťa in the Jungle.
Writer, translator, and journalist Markéta Pilátová (1973) studied Romance languages and history at the Faculty of Arts of Palacký University in Olomouc, where she later worked for six years as a lecturer. She then spent two years teaching Czech at the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Granada in Spain. Afterwards, she lived for twelve years in Argentina and Brazil, where she taught the descendants of Czech expatriates.
During this time, she met the granddaughter of Jan Antonín Baťa and wrote the novel With Baťa in the Jungle about his life in Brazil. In the book, Jan Antonín Baťa appears not only as a successful entrepreneur but also as a visionary and a person with many unfulfilled dreams, mistakes, and failures.
Markéta Pilátová is the author of numerous novels, short story collections, poetry, and ten books for children. Among her best-known works are Yellow Eyes Lead Home (2007), Tsunami Blues (2014), and With Baťa in the Jungle (2017). Her most recent works include the novel Senzibil (2020) and the children’s book Bába Bedla.
The event was organized by Czech Centres in cooperation with the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Cairo and the Czech Literary Centre. The discussion was moderated by Egyptian Bohemist and translator Khalid El Biltagi. The venue at the GrEEK Campus was filled mainly with students of Czech studies from Ain Shams University.
