Jáchym Topol
Jáchym Topol (born 1962) is a Czech writer and poet. He comes from a literary family: he is the son of the poet, playwright and translator Josef Topol, and the grandson of the writer Karel Schulz. He began his literary career in the 1970s. He was a songwriter for a rock band. In the 1980s, he published the self-published magazine Revolver. Due to his father's dissident activities, universities were closed to him. Topol changed several jobs, and was briefly imprisoned. He signed Charter 77, participated in the Velvet Revolution, and published an independent newsletter, which later became the liberal weekly Respekt. In the 1990s, he made the transition from poetry to grotesque, postmodern prose. The Devil's Workshop is one of his most influential works. The book has been translated into more than two dozen languages.
