Jan Zábrana

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Jan Zábrana (born July 4, 1931, in Heralec; died September 3, 1984, in Prague) was a Czech writer and translator.

His parents were teachers and politicians persecuted by the communist regime after the communist revolution of 1948: his mother, member of the regional parliament, was arrested and sentenced to 20 years of prison; his father, mayor of Humpolec before the communist coup, was also sentenced to 20 years in prison. All property of the Zábrana family was confiscated when Jan was nineteen. University studies were prohibited to non-communists, so he tried to study in a Catholic school for priests, but this was prohibited, also.

In the 1950s, Jan worked in blacksmith factory and wrote poems and short stories (published after the fall of the communist regime in 1989 in the book Sedm povídek). After 1954, he worked as translator and became one of the best Bohemian translators of 20th century. His interest focused mainly on Russian and American literature, including Aksjonov, Bunin, Cvetajeva, Mandelstam, Pasternak, Babel, and Platonov; and Allen Ginsberg, Graham Greene, Warren Miller, Sylvia Plath, Ferlinghetti, Ezra Pound, and Gregory Corso.

Zábrana also wrote essays (published after 1989). In 1950s, 1970s and 1980s Zábrana was a prohibited author; in 1960s, he could publish a few of his own poetry books: Utkvělé černé ikony 1965, Lynč 1968 and Stránky z deníku 1968, three detective stories (with Josef Škvorecký), and one novel for children. In the persecutions of 1970s and 80s, he worked on poetry and on his diaries, written between 1970 and 1984, published in 1992 under title Celý život (two thick volumes, around 2,000 pages).