Czech writer, dissident Jan Trefulka dies

Trefulka, who was hospitalised in Brno from last Thursday, died of renal failure and pneumonia, she added.

His funeral will be held in Brno on November 29.

Trefulka, who was born and lived in Brno, wrote prose, literary criticism as well as articles for various magazines.

In the 1960s, he worked as a journalist and later editor-in-chief of the Host do domu literary magazine.

He published his first literary reviews in Kulturni politika weekly in 1949. His prosaic debut, long short-story Happiness Rained on Them (Prselo jim stesti), appeared in 1962, followed by a book of short-stories.

Trefulka was banned from publishing officially during the "normalisation" era, the return of the hardline communist rule after the Soviet-led invasion by the Warsaw Pact troops in 1968, which crashed the Prague Spring communist-led reform movement in Czechoslovakia.

In the 1970s, Trefulka was active in the dissident movement and he signed the Charter 77 human rights manifesto.

In 1970-1989, his works, including novel The Criminal Uprising (Zlocin pozdvizeni, 1978), were published only in samizdat and at exile publishing houses. He also helped issue samizdat literature.

Trefulka returned to public life after the collapse of the communist regime in November 1989.

He became chairman of the Association of Moravian-Silesian Writers. As a journalist, he was promoting Moravia´s autonomy within the Czech Republic.

His collected works are being gradually published by the Brno-based Atlantis publisher's.

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz