Josef Škvorecký - Masaryk' square, Náchod, Czech Republic - Statues of Historic Figures on Waymarking.com

The over-life size statue of of a Czech-Canadian writer and publisher Josef Škvorecký (1924–2012) cab be found on the main square (Masaryk' square) of his native town Nachod. The statue, made of cast-iron, was unveiled here on May 11, 2014 and it was made by Czech sculptor Josef Faltus. Josef Škvorecký is depicted here casually sitting on the bench with his legs crossed. He wears a formal suit with a tie and glasses. He has his hat put aside on the bench.

Biography

Josef Vaclav Skvorecky, Czech-born writer (born Sept. 27, 1924, Nachod, Bohemia, Czech. [now in Czech Republic]—died Jan. 3, 2012, Toronto, Ont.), was popular with the reading public but faced persecution by Czechoslovakia’s communist government. For many years (1971–94) after having gone into exile, he and his wife, writer Zdena Salivarova, ran Sixty-Eight Publishers, a Toronto-based publishing house that focused on issuing the works of other émigré writers. Skvorecky attended Charles University, Prague (Ph.D., 1951), and then remained in Prague as an editor (1953–63) at Odean Publishers. His experiences while growing up in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia inspired his first novel, Zbabelci (translated as The Cowards, 1970), which he wrote in the late 1940s but did not publish until 1958; it was banned within weeks by Czech officials but was reissued during the Prague Spring a decade later. After the subsequent Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he and his wife immigrated to Canada, where from 1969 he was a member of the faculty (emeritus from 1990) at the University of Toronto. Skvorecky often featured his jazz-loving fictional alter ego, Danny Smiricky, in his novels, including Zbabelci, Mirákl (1972; The Miracle Game, 1990), and Príbeh inenýra lidských duší (1977; The Engineer of Human Souls, 1984), the translation of which in 1984 won the Canadian Governor General’s Award for fiction in English. He also translated English literature into Czech and wrote popular detective stories set in Prague. Skvorecky was honoured with the Literary Award of the Czechoslovakian Writers Union (1968), the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1980), the Order of Canada (1992), and the Czechoslovak Order of the White Lion (1990).

Biography cited from (visit link)

URL of the statue: Not listed

Visit Instructions:
You must have visited the site in person, not online.

Recent Visits/Logs:

There are no logs for this waymark yet.