Martin Vopěnka

Not that he would agree with Einstein—Martin Vopěnka was born in 1963 in Prague, where he studied nuclear and physical engineering and worked in the Psychiatry Research Institute before devoting himself to literature after the Velvet Revolution. “I perceive my life as a precious moment of light that needs to be exploited.”

For Vopěnka uncertainty and nomadism carry a special appeal: the unconscious urgency to travel and reveal—as well as to circumvent Czech heroics as director of Práh Publishers.

“If it is true that each of us is an entire universe, our experiences can have the weight of proof—even in cases where they cannot be shared.”

Vopěnka takes blue for green and gives us rose. “As does Kafka, he revives the irrational in man, turning the mystifying and inexplicable into reality.”

His work includes: Stones from the Mountains, Ballad of Descent, Hotel in the Midst of Life, The Antarctic on the Threshold of the End, A Sea of Grief for Your Dog, Journey to the End of Nowhere, The Fifth Dimension and The Sleeping City.

Martin Vopěnka lives in Prague.