I Caught Sight of My Face

“This is a kind of poetics where precision of lyricism attains a meaning that crosses the boundary of language. And for that, I am grateful.” — Ilya Kaminsky, contemporary poet and author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

Petr Hruška is widely considered one of the most important Czech poets.

Based on ‘The First Voyage around the World’, written exactly 500 years earlier by Antonio Pigafetta, Hruška’s I Caught Sight of my Face turns the glorious saga of Magellan’s voyage of discovery into an unsettling exploration of human behaviour, showing how man remains an anxious, insecure, sometimes cowardly, evil, xenophobic and violent being.

It is an uncomplicated, yet at the same time, deeply profound book, brought to life through illustrations by Jakub Špaňhel (1976), an acclaimed contemporary Czech visual artist, who creates an interesting dialogue between the text and its visual accompaniment.