Celebrated Navigation - Selected Stories

Jarda Cervenka


Jarda Cervenka's stories range from the jungles of Columbia to the back alleys of Prague and the slopes of Kilimanjaro. Celebrated Navigation includes favorite stories from his first three collections, plus two new pieces.


“These stories are enchanting in the most fundamental sense: wholly imagined, rich in nuanced detail, radiant with the captivating mystery of folk wisdom, yet entirely contemporary. Each story, immaculately and without affectation, presents a brief, sometimes breathtaking, drama. This is not simply Jarda Cervenka’s world, but ours—seen by his remorseless eye, told in his clean, wry voice.”

— Patricia Hampl


“In the most marvelous way, Jarda Cervenka’s imagination and his prodigious cosmopolitanism are not only contiguous but continuous—they are successive moments of one journey.”

—Jaimy Gordon


“Jarda Cervenka’s new book of short stories is more than a delight, it’s a continuing revelation: transnational tales of our world in crisis by an author who fills each place with exuberence and illumination.”

—William O’Rourke


ISBN 978-0-98293353-4       $14 US       Includes free shipping!

Jarda Cervenka is the recipient of the Richard Sullivan Prize, the Many Voices Project Prize, the Franz Kafka Award, and the Blue Jacket Award (Japan). Born and raised in Prague, he immigrated to the United States in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. He was a Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of Minnesota for 35 years, and internationally renowned in the field of cytogenetics. He has traveled extensively and lived in Japan, Nigeria and Kenya. Now retired, he and his wife Sasha divide their time between Prague, the Florida Keys, and their home in Minneapolis.

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