The audiobook of the year is Agatha Christie’s biography. Soukup won a special prize

The best audiobooks were announced on Thursday by the Association of Audiobook Publishers (AVA) in Prague’s Písecká Gate.

“The unique Alena Vránová copies Agatha Christie’s liveliness, her ever-present insight, light irony, sarcasm and special humanity with her age, expression, and expression of memories. The extremely plastic expression manages to play a kind, soothing nanny, a creepy bully, the anxiety of a little girl and the distance of an old woman who only remembers a specific situation in a few consecutive minutes. Vránová, together with Michal Bureš, created something completely extraordinary in the very difficult conditions of the pandemic restrictions,” said the jury, headed by the actor Tomáš Macháček.

All award winners were selected by a twenty-member expert jury from 90 registered titles from 14 publishers. The publishing house OneHotBook won the most awards, four in total.

The novel Předvečer sv. Nicholas by screenwriter Lukáš Csiscela with Saša Rašilov in the lead role. “A wide selection of actors, where even the smallest role is well thought out by its cast, are complemented by extremely realistic sounds, movements and work with the overall sound engineering of the recording,” praised the jury.

The best audiobook in the Multi-voice reading category was the story of the Sudeten family Alice Horáčková’s House in Half, read by Jan Holík, Magdaléna Borová and Filip Kaňkovský. “A very believable, plastic story evokes a directly tangible image in the listener through the overall audio processing,” said the jury.

Eliška Balzerová became the best performer for reading the memoirs of the French writer Annie Ernauxová’s Years. “Eliška Balzerová used her experience and mastery in a flawless and captivating interpretation of a complicated literary entity,” the jury stated.

The best performer was Jiří Vyorálek for the audiobook Zvedá se vítr, Kateřina Surmanová’s horror film set in South Moravia. Karin Lednické’s Lives with Zuzana Truplová and Norbert Lichy became the best spoken word out of categories. According to a special three-member jury, the best sound in the reading category is the audiobook There’s Something Inside by Tomáš Peřina read by Karel Dobrý, directed and with music by Ivan Acher. In the listeners’ vote, the fantasy Arila: The Last Star of Radek Starý read by Jitka Ježková won.

The audiobook market in the Czech Republic, whose turnover recorded a year-on-year increase of roughly three percent to more than 268 million crowns in 2022, is dominated by the publishing house OneHotBook. According to the latest AVA report, its total share last year was 21.5 percent. The publishing house OneHotBook is followed by the publishing house Tympanum with 16 percent of the market, and the third place is occupied by the company Audiotéka with 13 percent. Data for last year are not yet available.

According to AVA data, in 2023 its members published a total of 716 new titles, in 2022 it was 644 titles. Over 840,000 audiobooks have been sold. Of the genres, the greatest interest was in detective stories and thrillers, fantasy, humor and science fiction.