Authors
Jaroslav RUDIŠ
Jaroslav Rudiš was born in Turnova on June 8th 1972. He studied at the College of Education at Charles University (German and History), after which he was employed in various jobs in the Czech Republic and Germany (as a teacher, advertising agent, porter, salesman of dairy products, etc). He was awarded a scholarship in journalism in Berlin in 2001-2002. Since 2002 he has been the editor of the culture section of the daily newspaper Právo.
Jaroslav Rudiš, at the age of thirty, became not just a phenomenon of new Czech writing, but almost a revelation. His neorealistic or underground stories, which he brought together in his first novel under the title Nebe pod Berlínem [The Sky Under Berlin], received the Jiří Orten Prize in 2002, giving a boost to modern Czech literature. The stories have in parts the polemical outlook on large cities that is shared by the famous German film director Wim Wenders. They are tough and raw, but this implacable character is never less than fascinating, leaving the reader regretting the fact that Rudiš never wrote The Sky Under Prague. In the author’s first book, he has largely aligned himself with the poetics of the literary underground, mainly through his psychological, documentary-style approach to the world of those who are “living their lives” outside any type of establishment or modern consumerist lifestyle. Rudiš characterises his lively texts as being “rock stories from the Berlin underground”. In the individual episodes, however, he concentrates on the feelings and unconventional discussions of his characters, who, in individual scenes and in life in general, try to live with independence as their guiding principle. For example, in the existence of the non-conformist music groups of the U-Bahn we can clearly see a free-thinking community, influenced by the ideas of the beatniks and hipsters, a society of free-spirited people who are at the same time somewhat limited by their juvenile desire for freedom and independence, so that over the years they lose the ability to have any meaningful anchor in their lives. Unlike other underground writers before him, Rudiš does not turn to ideology or concentrate on ostentatious protests against society or on even more ostentatious gestures of protest. As an artist he is far more interested in the “authentic” modes of thought, behaviour and actions of his characters who “live in a street without homes”, and with whom the autobiographical narrator shares “the sky under Berlin”.
With the books Grandhotel (which was made into a film by David Ondříček in 2006) and Potichu [Silently] (which came out as an audio book in 2009) Rudiš confirmed his privileged position as an author of popular literature which is read mainly by younger people. At the same time, and usually as part of a creative duo, he began working on comic books (Alois Nebel - with Jaromír 99), theatre plays (Strange Love – with Petr Pýcha, 2007, Činoherní studio Ústí nad Labem) and radio plays (Lost in Praha – with the German writer Martin Becker, WDR, 2008; Herzgebirge/Srdcohoří, 2009, Salcburský guláš [Salzburg Goulash] - with Petr Pýcha, 2009, Strange Love - with Petr Pýcha, 2010 – all on Czech Radio 3-Vltava). Together with Igor Malijevský he organizes the successful EKG literary cabaret in Prague’s Arch Theatre (previously Monoskop in the Akropolis). Once a month, along with Jaroslava Haldová, he presents the literary Čajovna programme on Czech Radio 3-Vltava and he also works with Czech Television.
He gives many public readings, primarily in Germany, and it is there that he has enjoyed his greatest success abroad, though his books have also been published in other European countries.
February 2011 should see the premiere of Tomáš Luňák’s feature-length animated film based on the Alois Nebel comics which Rudiš wrote with Jaromír 99.
In 2010 Labyrint publishers will bring out the book Konec punku v Helsinkách [The End of Punk in Helsinki].
The profile was updated in April 2006
Deutsch 
Jaroslav RUDIŠ, Deutsch.doc
En français Jaroslav RUDIŠ, En français.doc
