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Josef Skvorecky Czech Author Dies at 87

Josef Skvorecky; the Czech author who stood his grounds on publishing banned works against the wish of his communist-run country has died at 87 on … Continue reading Josef Skvorecky Czech Author Dies at 87


Josef Skvorecky

Josef Skvorecky; the Czech author who stood his grounds on publishing banned works against the wish of his communist-run country has died at 87 on Tuesday in Canada precisely Toronto.

Josef Skvorecky

The news was passed by his wife;Zdena Salivarova.

His wife Zdena Salivarova told the Czech CTK news agency that he passed away on Tuesday in Toronto, Canada.

The writer fled there after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion and founded an agency that published books by dissident authors such as Vaclav Havel.

Havel, who died in December, became the first President of the Czech Republic.

In 1990, he presented Skvorecky with the Order of the White Lion – the country’s highest honour.

It was just one of many lifetime awards awarded to the prolific writer, famed for his improvisational prose style.

Skvorecky’s work explored recurring themes of the dangers of totalitarianism and repression of the masses.

In 1982, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize and two years later was presented with the Canadian Governor General’s Award for English Language Fiction.

In 1996, he was made a knight of the order of arts and letters – one of the highest honours in France – and he was named the recipient of the Czech Republic State Prize for Literature in 1999.

He also taught literature at the University of Toronto until retiring in 1990.

Skvorecky and his writer and actress wife Salivarova founded Sixty-Eight Publishers in 1971, three years after reaching the shores of Canada.

It was named in honour of the Prague Spring of 1968, a period of political liberalisation and decentralisation prior to the Soviet invasion.

Skvorecky began by publishing his own works, first in Czech and then in English. But he also published works by Arnost Lustig and Milan Kundera, with more than 200 books rolling off the presses.