Josef Škvorecký
Encyclopedia
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...
(ˈjozɛf ˈʃkvorɛtskiː) (born September 27, 1924 in Náchod
Náchod
Náchod -History:Náchod was founded in 14th century by knight Hron of Načeradice, who founded a castle on a strategical place, where local trade road reaches the defile called Branka. The first written note dates back to 1254.-Castle:...
, Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, now Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
) is a leading contemporary Czech
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and publisher who has spent much of his life in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident
Dissident
A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....
writers before the fall of communism in that country. By turns humorous, wise, eloquent and humanistic, Škvorecký's fiction deals with several themes: the horrors of totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
and repression, the expatriate
Expatriate
An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
experience, the miracle of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
.
History
Škvorecký graduated in 1943 from the Reálné gymnasiumGymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
in his native Náchod
Náchod
Náchod -History:Náchod was founded in 14th century by knight Hron of Načeradice, who founded a castle on a strategical place, where local trade road reaches the defile called Branka. The first written note dates back to 1254.-Castle:...
. During the Second World War he spent two years as a slave labourer
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
in a German aircraft factory.
After the war, he started studying at the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University in Prague. After his first term he moved to the Faculty of Arts, where he studied English and Philosophy, receiving his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1951.
Between 1952 and 1954, he performed his military service in the Czechoslovak army.
He worked briefly as a teacher, editor and translator during the 1950s. During this time he finished several novels including The End of the Nylon Age and The Cowards. When they were published in 1956-58, they were immediately condemned and banned by the Communist party. His prose style, open-ended and improvisational, was an innovation, but this and his democratic ideals were a challenge to the Communist regime. Škvorecký kept writing, and helped nurture the democratic movement that culminated in the Prague Spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
in 1968.
After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that year, Škvorecký and his wife, writer and actress Zdena Salivarová, fled to Canada.
In 1971, he and his wife founded 68 Publishers
68 Publishers
68 Publishers, also called Sixty-Eight Publishers, Sixtyeight Publishers, or even Nakladatelství 68 , was a publishing house formed in Toronto in 1971 by Czech expatriate Josef Škvorecký and his wife Zdena Salivarová...
which, over the next twenty years, published banned Czech and Slovak books. The imprint became an important mouthpiece for dissident writers, such as Václav Havel
Václav Havel
Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
, Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in...
, and Ludvík Vaculík
Ludvík Vaculík
Ludvík Vaculík is a Czech writer and journalist. A prominent samizdat writer, he is most famous as the author of the "Two Thousand Words" manifesto of June 1968.-Pre-1968:...
, among many others. For providing this critical literary outlet, the president of post-Communist Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel, later awarded the couple the Order of the White Lion
Order of the White Lion
The Order of the White Lion is the highest order of the Czech Republic. It continues a Czechoslovak order of the same name created in 1922 as an award for foreigners....
in 1990.
He taught at the Department of English at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
where he was eventually appointed Professor Emeritus of English and Film. He retired in 1990. (In Canada, he is considered to be a Canadian author despite the fact that he is still mostly publishing in Czech.)
Literary works
Most of Škvorecký’s novels are available in English: the novels The Cowards, Miss Silver's Past, The Republic of Whores, The Miracle Game, The Swell Season, The Engineer of Human Souls which won the Canadian Governor General's Award, The Bride of Texas, Dvorak in Love, The Tenor Saxophonist's Story, Two Murders in My Double Life, An Inexplicable Story or The Narrative of Questus Firmus Siculus, his selected short stories When Eve Was Naked and the two short novels The Bass Saxophone and Emöke. A recurring character in several of his novels is Danny Smiricky, who is a partial self-portrait of the author.He wrote four detective novels featuring Lieutenant Boruvka of the Prague Homicide Bureau: The Mournful Demeanor of Lieutenant Boruvka, Sins for Father Knox, The End of Lieutenant Boruvka and The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka.
His poetry was published as a collection in 1999 as ...there's no remedy for this pain (...na tuhle bolest nejsou prášky).
His non-fiction works include Talkin' Moscow Blues, a book of essays on jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
and politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, an autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
Headed for the Blues, and two books on the Czech cinema including All the Bright Young Men and Women.
Škvorecký wrote for films and television. The feature film The Tank Battalion was adapted from his novel The Republic of Whores. Other features, written for Prague TV, include Eine kleine Jazzmusik, adapted from his story of the same name, The Emöke Legend from a novella of the same name, and a two-hour TV drama Poe and the Murder of a Beautiful Girl, based on Edgar Allan Poe's story The Mystery of Marie Roget. Three very successful TV serials were made from his stories: Sins for Father Knox, The Swell Season and Murders for Luck.
In the shadow of the above-mentioned lies a forgotten but unique and brilliant film Pastor's End, based on the novel of the same name. Based on a true story, the movie produced in 1968 never saw the light of day and went straight into locked Communist archives due to the fact that its author "illegally" fled the country.
Prominent in his writing for radio was a long-running monthly series on literature for Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...
. From 1973-1990 he wrote over 200 of these shows covering notable literary works and discussing literary themes.
Awards
Among his numerous literary awards are the Neustadt International Prize for LiteratureNeustadt International Prize for Literature
The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is a biennial award for literature sponsored by the University of Oklahoma and its international literary publication, World Literature Today. It is widely considered to be the most prestigious international literary prize after the Nobel Prize in...
(1980), the Canadian Governor General's Award
Governor General's Award
The Governor General's Awards are a collection of awards presented by the Governor General of Canada, marking distinction in a number of academic, artistic and social fields. The first was conceived in 1937 by Lord Tweedsmuir, a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction who created the Governor...
for English Language Fiction
Governor General's Award for English language fiction
This is a list of recipients of the Governor General's Award for English language fiction.-1930s:*1936: Bertram Brooker, Think of the Earth*1937: Laura Salverson, The Dark Weaver*1938: Gwethalyn Graham, Swiss Sonata...
(1984), the Czech Republic State Prize for Literature (1999) and the Prize of the Comenius Pangea Foundation “For Improvement of Human Affairs” (2001) which he received with the Polish film director Andrzej Wajda
Andrzej Wajda
Andrzej Wajda is a Polish film director. Recipient of an honorary Oscar, he is possibly the most prominent member of the unofficial "Polish Film School"...
.
Nominated for the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
in 1982.
Awarded the Order of the White Lion
Order of the White Lion
The Order of the White Lion is the highest order of the Czech Republic. It continues a Czechoslovak order of the same name created in 1922 as an award for foreigners....
by the President of Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel
Václav Havel
Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
, 1990.
In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of Canada
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...
.
Škvorecký is a Guggenheim Fellow as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
Royal Society of Canada
The Royal Society of Canada , may also operate under the more descriptive name RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada , is the oldest association of scientists and scholars in Canada...
.
Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is an Order of France, established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture, and confirmed as part of the Ordre national du Mérite by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963...
, République Française
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, 1996.
Selected bibliography
Novels- Konec nylonového věku (End of the Nylon Age), 1956 (banned by censors)
- ZbabělciZbabělciZbabělci is a Czech novel by Josef Škvorecký. Written in 1948 and 1949 and first published in 1958, it is a story from the very end of the Second World War in Europe. Narrated in the first person by a Czech teenager Danny Smiřický, it takes place from 4 May to 11 May 1945 in his hometown, a...
(The Cowards), 1958 - Lvíče (The Lion Cub; translated into English as Miss Silver's Past), 1969
- Tankový prapor (The Tank Battalion; translated into English as The Republic of Whores), 1969
- Mirákl (The Miracle Game), 1972
- Prima sezóna (The Swell Season), 1975
- Konec poručíka Borůvky (The End of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1975
- Příběh inženýra lidských duší (The Engineer of Human Souls), 1977
- Návrat poručíka Borůvky (The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1980
- Scherzo capriccioso (Dvorak In Love), 1984
- Nevěsta z Texasu (The Bride from Texas), 1992
- Dvě vraždy v mém dvojím životě (Two Murders in My Double Life), 1999
- Nevysvětlitelný příběh aneb Vyprávění Questa Firma Sicula (An Inexplicable Story, or, The Narrative Of Questus Firmus Siculus), 1998
- Krátké setkání, s vraždou (Brief Encounter, With Murder), 1999, with Zdena Salivarová
- Setkání po letech, s vraždou (Encounter After Many Years, With Murder), 2001, with Zdena Salivarová
- Setkání na konci éry, s vraždou (Encounter at the End of an Era, With Murder), 2001, with Zdena Salivarová
Novellas
- Legenda Emöke (The Legend Of Emöke), 1963
- Bassaxofon (The Bass Saxophone), 1967
Collections of short stories
- Sedmiramenný svícen (The Menorah), 1964
- Ze života lepší společnosti (The Life of High Society), 1965
- Smutek poručíka Borůvky (The Mournful Demeanor of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1966
- Babylónský příběh a jiné povídky (A Babylonian Story and Other Stories), 1967
- Hořkej svět (The Bitter World), 1969
- Hříchy pro pátera Knoxe (Sins for Father Knox), 1973
- Ze života české společnosti (The Life of Czech Society), 1985
- Povídky tenorsaxofonisty (The Tenor Saxophonist's Story), 1993
- Povídky z Rajského údolí (The Edenvale Stories), 1996
- When Eve Was Naked, 2000
Collections of essays
- Nápady čtenáře detektivek (Reading Detective Stories), 1965
- O nich - o nás (They - That Is: Us), 1968
- Samožerbuch (The Book of Self-Praise), 1977
- Všichni ti bystří mladí muži a ženy (All Those Bright Young Men And Women), 1972 (in English translation)
- Na brigádě (Working Overtime), 1979
- Jirí Menzel and the History of the Closely Watched Trains, 1982
- Talkin' Moscow Blues, 1988
- Franz Kafka, jazz a jiné marginálie ( Franz Kafka, Jazz and other Marginal Matters), 1988
- ...in the lonesome October, 1994
- Le Camarade Joueur de jazz, 1996