Jan Zábrana

Jan Zábrana (1931-1984) was a Czech poet, prose writer, and translator. Unable to complete his university studies because his parents were persecuted and imprisoned by the communist regime, he had to take up a variety of manual jobs before making his name as a translator from the English and Russian. He introduced Czech readers to such major authors as Osip Mandelstam, Isaak Babel, Boris Pasternak, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Sylvia Plath, and Allen Ginsberg. Much of his own work was only published posthumously, with just three collections of his poetry appearing in his lifetime. After the fall of communism, Zábrana’s diaries appeared under the title Celý život (A Whole Life) and led to a re-evaluation of him as a major Czech writer.