Welcome!
My writing draws from the varied experiences of my life, which has taken me to three continents, brought me across geopolitical divides, and made me a witness to many historical events. I am so pleased that Encounter with the Future has been selected as a 2024 NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite!
— Anika Pavel
Reviews…
“The book, Encounter with the Future, is exemplary in its voice and writing style. The author does an excellent job at making the reader feel strong emotions throughout reading the narrative.”
— Writers Digest
“Moving, incisive memoir of a surprising life after exiting the Iron Curtain.… A natural storyteller and shrewd observer, Pavel vividly places readers in each setting and nuanced emotional state,”
— Booklife Reviews, Publisher’s Weekly
(read full review HERE)
“Encounter with the Future uses a series of interconnected essays to follow author Anika Pavel from her childhood in Iron Curtain Czechoslovakia to her struggles and then successes as an international fashion model and actor in mod era London to her present life as a writer, wife, mother and grandmother. The individual essays in story form chronicle this life still in forward motion, and are written with the wit and warmth and perceptiveness which characterize the author herself.”
— Kristopher Franklin, author of Silvercat, The High San Juan, Relentless, and Gravedigger
“Anika Pavel manages, from her present and sophisticated vantage, to evoke the innocence of youth. In pellucid prose she gives us both a history of transience—from Czechoslovakia to England—and the coming-of-age story of a brave young woman who travels open-eyed.”
— Nicholas Delbanco, author, most recently, of Why Writing Matters
“A tapestry of stories that resonate on a deeply personal level.”
— Martina Moravcova, two time Olympic medalist
“The essays in Encounter with the Future have accomplished what we always ask of great writing, to transport us in place and time and original vision.”
— Mark Leichliter editor of bioStories Magazine
To read Goodreads reviews, click HERE.
What is my book about?
Tina Brown of Vanity Fair said in an interview that people like to read about other people.
The stories in this book are people stories; a chronological, political and social drama running parallel with a rapid coming of age in an unknown world. In between is a history of a tiny country and its people, lessons learned and family remembered.
