Egon Hostovský

Egon Hostovský (23 April 1908, Hronov – 7 May 1973, Montclair), was a Czech writer. He was related to the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. Hostovský described Zweig as "a very distant relative";[1] some sources describe them as cousins.

He studied at the gymnasium in Náchod in 1927, then philosophy in Prague and at university in Vienna in 1929, but did not graduate.

He returned to Prague in 1930 and worked as an editor in several publishing houses.

In 1937 Hostovský joined the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in 1939 he was posted to Brussels, from where, after the occupation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, he emigrated to Paris. After Paris was occupied in 1940, he fled to Portugal and then, in 1941, travelled to the United States of America, where he worked in New York at the Czechoslovakian (exile government's) consulate.

His father, sisters, and their families died in concentration camps.[2][3]

After World War II he returned to Czechoslovakia and again worked at the Foreign Ministry, but in 1948 he left into his second exile, to Denmark, and then to Norway and finally to the United States, where he worked as a Czech language teacher and later as a journalist and editor at Radio Free Europe. Several of his novels, including The Midnight Patient and Three Nights, were translated in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Philip Hillyer Smith, Jr., a scholar of linguistics and the Czech language.

After Hostovský's death, a literary prize—the Egon Hostovský Prize—was founded in his name by his third wife. Their son Paul (b. 1959) is a poet[4][5]

Works

His work is influenced by his Jewish origin and exile. His literary heroes fight (inner) evil, due to political situation are forced to leave their country and search for lost certainties and roots. Before his first emigration his work was influenced by expressionism.

His work is included in:

References to him are made in the following books:

References

  1. ↑ “Egon Hostovský: Vzpomínky, studie a dokumenty o jeho díle a osudu”, Sixty-Eight Publishers, 1974
  2. ↑ Publisher's notes to “The Arsonist”, Twisted Spoon Pr (December 1996), ISBN 80-902171-0-9.
  3. ↑ http://www.amazon.ca/Arsonist-Egon-Hostovsky/dp/8090217109
  4. ↑ “Fathers and Sons, Poems and Oboes: An interview with Paul Hostovsky”, Newsletter of the Embassy of the Czech Republic, January 2007.
  5. ↑ http://www.paulhostovsky.com/interview_2007_01.html

External links

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