Dora Kaprálová is a Czech writer, journalist and documentary maker born in Brno in 1975 and based mainly in Berlin. Trained in dramaturgy and screenwriting at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts, she has written prose for adults and children, literary reportage, radio documentaries, plays and screenplays. Her books include A Winter Book of Love, Berlin Notebook, Islands, Suffering and Other Genres and Mr Nobody and the White Darkness. Across forms, she combines close observation with dreamlike shifts, dry humour and an interest in cultural memory, everyday encounters and the porous border between fact and invention.
Her novel Maribor Hypnosis, published in Czech by Větrné mlýny in 2025, circles the Slovenian city through a common housefly’s perspective and links its cultural memory to the story of an illusionist. The fragmented narrative moves between past and present, folding magical realism into reflections on writing, manipulation and contemporary disinformation. The book was adapted for radio and the stage, and won both the 2026 Magnesia Litera Book of the Year and prose awards.
In May 2026, Maribor Hypnosis received the Grand Prix of the European Union Prize for Literature. Its German translation, published by mikrotext, is presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair on 8 October 2026, where Kaprálová appears in a dedicated discussion. During 2026–2027 she is also a literature fellow at the International Artists’ House Villa Concordia in Bamberg, developing a new novel about fragile family memories.