Jáchym Topol

Jáchym Topol (August 4, 1962, Prague) is a Czech writer, a member of the Czech underground literature movement, and since the middle 1980s one of the co-founders of an underground Czech literary periodic Revolver Revue.

Life

Jáchym Topol comes from a well-known literary family. His father, Josef Topol, is a renowned Czech playwright, poet, and Shakespeare translator.

Jáchym's writing began with lyrics for a rock band called Psí vojáci (Dog Soldiers), led by his younger brother, Filip, in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In 1982 he cofounded the samizdat magazine Violit, in 1985 the Revolver Revue, a samizdat review that specialized in modern Czech writing. Because of his father's dissident activities, Topol was not allowed to go to university. Therefore after graduating from gymnasium he worked as a stoker, stocker, construction worker, and coal deliveryman. Several times he was imprisoned for short periods, both for his samizdat publishing activities and for his smuggling across the Polish border in cooperation with Polish Solidarity. He was also a signatory of Charta 77 - human rights declaration.

Jáchym played a part in the 1989 so called Velvet Revolution, publishing the independent newsletter Information Service (Informační servis), which later turned to the weekly magazine Respekt. He was a reporter with Respekt for four years, he still writes for, and with Revolver Revue for three years.

He has also written lyrics for three albums by singer Monika Naceva: "Moznosti tu sou" (There Is a Chance, 1994), "Nebe je rudý" (The Sky Is Red, 1996), and "Mimoid" (1998). In addition, poems from "City, Sister, Silver" ("Sestra") were set to music and released as a CD ("Sestra: Jáchym Topol & Psí Vojáci") by Filip Topol and his band in 1994. Now he lives in Prague with his wife and two daughters.

Works

Poems

* "Miluji tě k zbláznění" ("I Love You Madly", 1988) – first collection of poems published as samizdat, received the Tom Stoppard Prize for Unofficial Literature (founded in 1983 by Tom Stoppard, a British playwright of Czech parents, and awarded by Charta 77 Foundation in Stockholm), in 1990 published by Atlantis.

* "V úterý bude válka" ("The War Will Start on Tuesday",1993) – translated into Chinese, English, French, German, Hebrew, Lithuanian, Polish and Vietnamese, in October 1994, Allen Ginsberg read a few poems from this book in Alex Zucker's translation at the FringeNYC festival.

Novels

* "Výlet k nádražní hale" (1994)
/ English translation: "A Trip To The Train Station", Small Press Distribution (1995)
* "Sestra" (1994)
/ English translation by Alex Zucker: "City, Sister, Silver", Catbird Press (2000)
won the Egon Hostovský Prize as Czech book of the year (the prize was founded in 1973 by Regina Hostovská, widow of the Czech novelist Egon Hostovský, who had gone into exile in the United States), well received by Czech readers and critics, translated into several languages
* "Anděl" (1995)
/ German translation: "Engel EXIT", Volk und Welt (1997)
/ French translation by Marianna Canavaggio: "Ange exit", J'ai lu (2002)
* "Nemůžu se zastavit (Rozhovory)", Portál (2000)
* "Noční práce" (2001)
"Night works"
/ French translation by Marianna Canavaggio: "Missions nocturnes", Laffont (2002)
* "Kloktat dehet" (2005)
"To Gurgle Tar"
about life in a children's home

Translations

* "Trnová dívka" (1996)
"Thorn Girl"
collection of Native American legends and myths in Czech translation by Jáchym Topol