Michal Ajvaz

Michal Ajvaz (born 1949) is a Czech writer. He studied Czech and aesthetics at Charles University in Prague from 1967 to 1974, and received his doctorate there in 1977 for a dissertation on Richard Weiner and Karel Čapek. During the communist regime, he wrote without prospects of publication and worked, among other jobs, as a caretaker, night watchman and pump operator. From 1994 onward he worked as a freelance author; between 1996 and 1999 he was an editor at Literární noviny. Ajvaz writes poetry, short stories, novels, essays and theoretical studies, and his works have been translated into 24 languages. His awards include the Jaroslav Seifert Prize (2005), the Magnesia Litera Award (2012), the Prix Utopiales (2015) and the Czech State Prize for Literature (2020).