The Recipient of the Premio Iberoamericano Award: Our Hope is to Reconcile with the












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            Out of 23 candidates, one of the main prizes of the 16th annual Premio Iberoamericano awar

            Jandečková, a student of Spanish and French at the Charles University Faculty of Arts, for
            entitled “Ernesto Sábato: The Tunnel. The first and the other.“ It soon became evident tha
            of the words “tunnel” and “the first and the other” are much more complex than they might 

            submitted for this year’s instalment were written in Spanish or Portuguese. They were judg
            content, linguistic qualities and originality.


            1st place: Jan Darebný (Masaryk University in Brno) for his thesis “Compose Your Verse wit
            Metre in Lope de Vega’s The Knight of Olmedo”

            2nd place: Michal Kováč (Masaryk University in Brno) for his thesis “Marcelism in the Esta
            Government of Marcelo Catano”
            3rd place: Eva Jandečková (Charles University) for her thesis “Ernesto Sábato. The Tunnel.

            the Other”.
                                                                                                      
            What exactly does your thesis on the work of Ernesto Sábato focus on?                     
            My thesis focuses mainly on Sábato’s major novel El Túnel, first in a trilogy of the novel
            Darkness in English. The thesis identifies some of the themes that also recur in the secon
                                                                                                      
            in terms of oppositions. Everything takes place in oppositions that he represents by a str
            of them to be found.                                                                      
                                                                                                      
                                                                                                      
                                                                                                      
                                                                                                      
            Eva Jandečková and Prof. PhDr. Josef Opatrný, CSc.                                        
            Why did you choose your topic? Was it because of the quality of the literary work itself, 
            broader implications of Sábato’s approach and the worldview you mentioned?

            It was more of a lucky coincidence. I am grateful mostly to Dr. Hedvika Vydrová, my adviso
            me to this topic and this writer. As for the focus of the thesis, it was her idea at first
            became interested and quickly adopted it as my own, because it is a very complex and immer

            least for me.
            How will your relationship with the work of Sábato continue? Are you going to do some more
            or are you thinking about leaving it for other topics?

            In my Master’s thesis, I’m going for a linguistic topic, so I’ve already left, but this is
            of days. As for this author, I find him immensely interesting and his novels very moving, 
            depressing at the same time, so I believe I will come back to him eventually, but for now,

            some time apart.
            Even the most depressing works of art hold some kind of hope. Did you find it in Sábato’s 
            Scholars keep arguing whether The Tunnel contains some hope, or not. In my opinion, it is 

            personal interpretation. I personally think that there is hope in it.
            And where does the hope come from?
            I think it can be found in the narratives of the main characters. They start out as comple

            but even if it ends quite badly for them, they find some peace and reconcile with the worl
            opposed to them and to which they have been opposed.
            (Marie Kohoutová)

            Translation: Jaroslav Švelch