Ivan Landsmann was born on 26. 2. 1949 in Nový Jičín. He is an example of an untrained author whose main theme is his own life, which he manages to describe in a very unusual style. From the age of 16 he worked as a delivery man; after returning from army service he worked in the Antonín Zápotocký mine in Karvina for 16 years.
In 1985 he left for Canada and then later the Netherlands (Rotterdam), where he met Jaroslav Hutka, who encouraged him to start writing. He began to return to the Czech Republic regularly after 1989 and for the past three years he has remained here permanently.
The publication of his book Pestré vrstvy (Torst, Prague 1999), aroused considerable interest, but his subsequent works Fotr (Torst, Prague 2000) and Vězení na svobodě (Torst, Prague 2002) did not receive the same attention. In 2009 the publishers XYZ brought out his book Šestý smysl,which details the author’s return home after 1989.
(The Literary Encyclopedia LES)
This author profile was last updated in 2010.