Rudiš Jaroslav

Jaroslav Rudiš was born in Czechoslovakia in 1972; he now lives in Berlin and in Jičín in the Bohemian Paradise. He is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and musician. After his studies of German Language and Literature and History in Liberec, Zurich and Berlin, he worked, among other things, as a journalist.

Novels by Rudiš published in German include Grandhotel [Grand Hotel], Konec punku v Helsinkách [The End of Punk in Helsinki], Národní třída [National Avenue] and Winterbergova poslední cesta [Winterberg’s Last Journey] (by Luchterhand) and Nebe pod Berlínem [The Sky under Berlin] (by btb). He has also published the graphic novels Alois Nebel [Alois Nebel] (with Jaromír 99) and Noční chodci [Night Walkers] (with Nicolas Mahler), as well as the novella Vánoce v Praze [Christmas in Prague] (with illustrations by Jaromír 99).

From 2012 to 2013, Rudiš was a visiting professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He won the Usedom Literature Prize in 2014 and the Literature Houses Award in 2018. In 2019, his novel Winterberg’s Last Journey (his first book written in German) was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize (Fiction); the same work won the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 2020.

His bestsellers Návod na cestování vlakem [Railways: A User’s Guide] and Návod na pití piva [Beer-Drinking: A User’s Guide] are published by Munich’s Piper Verlag. As a musician, Rudiš has released three albums with the Kafka Band – Zámek [The Castle], Amerika [America] and Proces [The Trial]. He wrote the play Poslední pivo [The Last Beer] for the E.T.A. Hoffmann Theatre in Bamberg as its E.T.A. Hoffmann writer-in-residence.

Rudiš writes in both German and Czech. He was awarded the prestigious Mörike Prize in 2024. His works have been translated into many languages, as well as being adapted for the screen. He is a recipient of the Czech Republic’s Medal of Merit. He was honoured with the Federal Republic of Germany’s Order of Merit for being “one of the most committed bridges between Germany and Czechia”. 

Works translated into: Arabic, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Polish, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian.