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Martin Reiner Czech Republic    PWF 2017

Poet, novelist, publisher—Martin Reiner was born in 1964 in Brno—where his troubles started early. "From the beginning my acute sense of justice has been on the rack. Fortunately, I developed a positive philosophy of life, with an acute taste for diplomacy, refined in early adulthood through fighting and bad behavior—almost three semesters of military college, accompanied by increasing resistance and terminated by expulsion. The most reliable and fastest way to leave the army was through jail, where I finally spent eight months."

After Martin Reiner’s release from prison, he exchanged jobs like a character from a Bohumil Hrabal novel: dance supervisor, secondhand bookshop assistant, press agent for the Ministry of Culture.

At first Reiner wrote poems, publishing several collections. Spa, his first prose title, was published in 1998, followed by other books. Poet, the biography of Ivan Blatný and recipient of the 2014 Magnesia Litera Award, made the author famous. One in a Million, an extraordinary collection of stories, appeared last year.

Currently director of the Druhé Město Publishing House, Martin Reiner  lives in Brno.