Authors
Martin VOPĚNKA
The Jewish Czech writer, traveller and journalist Martin Vopěnka (born 1963) studied nuclear and physical Engineering at the Czech Technical University, but only because the communist regime prevented him from studying in the humanities.
Otherwise, since he has been writing since his childhood he. He started with poems (and has been returning to poetry recently), and as a child won several literary competitions. Up to 1989 he worked in the Psychiatry Research Institute, and since the revolution he has devoted himself exclusively to publishing and his own writing. He lives in Prague with his wife Anna. He has two children of his own and two step-children.
In the last two years he has been contributing polemic articles to the national daily paper MF Dnes.
As a traveller who loves mountain wildernesses he has visited Kirghizia (when still part of the USSR), Chile, Iceland, Argentina and (many times) Rumaniam it was and spent more than a month on Nelson Island in the Antarctic.
He is a Jew from his mother's side and although he does not follow the Jewish religion or take part in the life of the Jewish community, psychologically he feels himself to be Jewish, and finds Jewish tendencies, models of conduct and thinking, inside himself. Perhaps this is why the themes that he chooses for his books go beyond the local themes of much Czech literature and are universal..
His writings can be divided into the following categories:
A/ Books based on his relationship with mountains and philosophical ideas on the contemporary world:
Kameny z hor [Stones from the Mountains] (Mladá fronta, 1989),
Pohádky větrných hor [Fairytales from the Windy Mountains'] (Knižní klub, 1998),
Antarktida na prahu konce [The Antarctic on he Threshold of the End](Práh, 2000, Sofa, 2000).
B/ Psychological novels (the main line of his work):
Balada o sestupu, published in English translation under the Title, Ballad of Descent (Rozmluvy, 1992, Northwestern University Press, 1996, EdituraUniversal Dalsi 1998),
Hotel uprostřed života [The Hotel in the Midst of Life] (NLN, 1999),
Konec zákona [The End of the Law](Práh, 2003),
Moře smutku za tvým psem [A Sea of Grief for Your Dog] (Prostor, 2002),
Moje cesta do ztracena [Journey to the Other End of Nowhere] (Mladá fronta, 2005). This last book combined elements of both the preceding lines of work. It won the annual Mladá fronta Publishing House Prize. The author has adapted it into a libretto for the opera Putování Benjamina [Benjamin's Travels]. Currently the music is being completed and the opera is to be staged in 2008 or 2009. The author is also preparing it as an idea and screenplay for a film.
C/ For children he has written:
Pohádky větrných hor [Fairytales of the Windy Mountains] (Knižní klub, 1998)
Encyklopedie Poznávám život a svět [The Encylopaedia Finding out about Life and the World](Práh, 2002). Rated as the best encyclopaedia for children by the Faculty of Education at Charles University.
D/ Experimental prose:
Laska po sms [Text Massage love](Práh, 2001, Eurotel, 2001, Sofa, 2002)
E/ Unpublished (the author is not currently seeking publication):
Třetí patro [The Third Floor] (novella), Můj Žid [My Jew](novella)
F/ The novel The Fifth Dimension was written in 2006-2007. To write it the author needed to get to know the Argentine mountains where most of the novel is set, and so he made an expedition to the desert plateaux close to the Argentine summits of Incahuasi and Nevada.
G/ In recent years he has been occasionally writing poems that have been published individually in the press and are gradually attracting the interest of the critics.
Vopěnka took part in he Prague Festival of Writers in 1997.
Deutsch 
Martin VOPĚNKA
En français Martin VOPĚNKA
