Jan Trefulka
Born(1929-05-15)15 May 1929
Brno, Czechoslovakia
Died22 November 2012(2012-11-22) (aged 83)
Brno, Czech Republic
OccupationWriter
NationalityCzech

Jan Trefulka (15 May 1929 – 22 November 2012) was a Czech writer, translator, literary critic and publicist.

Biography

Trefulka was born in Brno, Czech Republic, where he also died.[1] He attended school with Milan Kundera and the pair remained lifelong friends.

Critical of the communist regime, in 1950 he was expelled from the Czechoslovakian Communist Party for "anti-party activities" along with Kundera. At the same time he was expelled from Charles University in Prague where he was studying literature and aesthetics. Trefulka wrote about his run-in with the communist party in his first novella Pršelo jim štestí (Happiness Rained on Them, 1962). Trefulka was involved with Samizdat - the publishing and distributing of censored literature under communist rule, and was a signatory of Charter 77.

Trefulka found it difficult to find work in the country after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. He spent time unemployed and working as a manual labourer.

After the Velvet Revolution and the downfall of the communist regime in 1989, he became more active in public life, becoming president of the Association of Moravian-Silesian Writers and a member of the first Czech Television Council.

List of works

  • Happiness Rained on Them (Pršelo jim štěstí) (1962)
  • Praise Only for the Fools (O bláznech jen dobré) (1973)
  • The Criminal Uprising (Zločin pozdvižen) (1978)
  • Seduced and Betrayed (Svedený a opuštěný) (1983)
  • A Fool's Reader (Bláznova čítanka) (1998) A collection of Trefulka's work published in Samizdat.

References

  1. ↑ "Czech writer, dissident Jan Trefulka dies". Czech News Agency. 22 November 2012. Retrieved 22 November 2012.


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