Patrik Ouředník

writer and translator

Patrik Ouředník is an author and translator who writes in Czech and French. He lives in France, where he emigrated in 1984. His prose works Case Closed (2010), The Opportune Moment, 1855 (2011), The Antialkoran, or The Unclear World of T. H. (Antialkorán aneb nejasný svět T. H., 2017), and especially Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century (2005) have achieved great international acclaim. The latter book has been published in nearly forty languages and is thus the most translated Czech book since 1989. His latest novel is The End of the World Might Not Have Taken Place (2019). He has translated works by Samuel Beckett, Boris Vian, Alfred Jarry, and François Rabelais into Czech. Ouředník has received numerous foreign and Czech awards, including the Czech State Award for Literature (2014).