12 facts about Jan Křesadlo

Václav Jaroslav Karel Pinkava (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːtslaf ˈjaroslaf ˈkarɛl ˈpɪŋkava]; 9 December 1926 – 13 August 1995), better known by his pen name Jan Křesadlo (pronounced [ˈjan ˈkr̝ɛsadlo]), was a Czech psychologist who was with a prizewinning novelist and poet.

An anti-communist, Pinkava emigrated to Britain next his wife and four children following the 1968 violent behavior of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet-led armies of the Warsaw pact. He worked as a clinical psychologist until his to the lead retirement in 1982, when he turned to full-time writing. His first novel “Mrchopěvci” (GraveLarks) was published by Josef Škvorecký’s emigre publishing home 68 Publishers, and earned the 1984 Egon Hostovský prize.

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He chose his pseudonym (which means firesteel) partly because it contains the uniquely Czech sound ř; in addition, he was loving of creating more pseudonyms such as Jake Rolands (an anagram), J. K. Klement (after his grandfather, for translations into English), Juraj Hron (for his Slovak-Moravian writings), Ferdinand Lučovický z Lučovic a na Suchým dole (for his music), Kamil Troud (for his illustrations), Ἰωάννης Πυρεῖα (for his Astronautilia), and more.

Pinkava was also sprightly in choral music, composing (among others) a Glagolitic Mass. As well, he worked in mathematical logic, discovering the many-valued logic algebra which bears his name.

A polymath and polyglot, Pinkava was fond of vibes intense goals for himself, such as translating Jaroslav Seifert’s interwoven sonnet cycle virtually Prague, ‘A Wreath of Sonnets’. He published a gathering of his own poems in seven languages. Perhaps his most staggering attainment is ΑΣΤΡΟΝΑΥΤΙΛΙΑ Hvězdoplavba, a 6575-line science fiction epic poem, an odyssey in classical Homeric Greek, with its parallel hexameter translation into Czech. This was published hurriedly after his death, in a limited edition. (ISBN 80-237-2452-5) Only his first, prize-winning novel has been published in English translation, as GraveLarks in a bilingual edition in 1999 (ISBN 9788086013817) and in a revised edition in 2015 (ISBN 9780993377303)

He is the daddy of film director Jan Pinkava who normal an Oscar for Geri’s Game in 1998 and after that illustrated GraveLarks.

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