After 1990 he worked in Moscow as a correspondent and editor for the newspaper Lidové noviny; after his return in 1993-1994 he was its editor-in-chief, after which he worked as a reporter in the Balkans. He was involved in setting up the Lidové noviny Foundation, and with Petra Procházková founded the journalism and film agency Epicentrum, which was closely involved with the Chechen war of liberation. He was awarded the František Kriegel Prize and the most prestigious Ferdinand Peroutka Prize for journalism. He is now a senator in the Czech Republic Senate.
Although he is the graduate of two universities, Jaromír Štětina claims that all of his fundamental knowledge concerning the modern period was gained from the so-called university of life. Despite all the bureaucratic obstacles which he had to overcome he has gradually become one of the greatest experts on contemporary political and religious conflicts in many parts of the world. However, Štětina has never embarked on his expeditions as an inquisitive tourist, but from the outset as a scientist (the colourful experiences from those journeys were transformed into informative travelogues), then as a writing traveller, and particularly after 1989 as a “passionate reporter”. Following in the footsteps of Egon Erwin Kisch, he tried always to be “present” and at the same time strictly adhered to the principle that a war correspondent must be impartial. This tone can be sensed throughout his publications, which alter their focus between travel writing and reporting. However, if there is a personal style in Štětina’s travel writing and reporting, in his novels he is continually searching for a particular genre. He has always had literary ambitions. However, both his longer prose works (the book of “novelistic” reports from Iran entitled Studna pro Mandon, and his newer novel Bastardi) present more of a diversified area of symbolic stories and intricate situations. In the second novel in particular, even though it is expertly divided into an impressively constructed mosaic (in which we come across essayistic excerpts and reporterly observations of contemporary society) it remains a mosaic (not only in terms of genre but also style) and not an epic narrative. Štětina’s narrative technique consists mainly of the combination of literary detail with a journalist’s philosophy of the world – and for this approach short stories seem to suit the author best, especially those connected with the precariousness of actual social and political themes, as was demonstrated by the writer’s latest short-story collections, Století zázraků and Vykradači hrobů. At the same time there exists a completely “different” Jaromír Štětina, revelling in adventurous and entertaining themes, looking for pleasure in stories which are neither journalistic nor political. Such a book which was widely acclaimed by readers was the “waterman’s bible”, his debut travelogue S Matyldou po Indu – and although different, there is a kindred spirit in a later book written with similar erudition and enthusiasm, the “epochal encyclopedia of the hellish history of the Czech lands” - Výprava za českými čerty, although Štětina was only its co-author. It is not by accident that the artist’s centre of gravity lies more in his “semi-literary” works than in the purely novelistic works, where obligations towards social and moral concerns tend to put pressure on artistic creation. Jaromír Štětina’s closing message from his philosophy of life in the contemporary world around the turn of the 21st century sounds like this: “All our unhappiness at the close of this dislocated century comes from the fact that humanity has been unable to establish an order which would value the individual as a wonderful holy image, each man a creation which is beautiful and unique, different from all the rest, and brings joy.”
