Ondřej Cikán was born in 1985 in Prague and has lived in Vienna since 1991. He is a graduate in Latin and Ancient Greek, has dual Czech and Austrian citizenship, and works as a bilingual author, translator, publisher, director, composer and teacher.
For his translations (not only from Czech into German) he was awarded the Austrian State Prize for Literary Translation in 2023.
From Czech, Cikán has translated classic authors such as Karel Hynek Mácha, the symbolists Březina, Hlaváček and Sova, the poets Nezval and Biebl, the standalones Váchal and Kocourek, the underground poets Bondy, Vodseďálek and Krchovský, and contemporary poets such as Iveta Ciprysová and Zuzana Lazarová.
From Ancient Greek, he has translated Longus’s pastoral novel Daphnis and Chloe (with George Danek; into German) and the Byzantine epic Digenis Akritis (with Markéta Kulhánková; into Czech).
In 2003, Cikán and Anatol Vitouch founded the literary group “Die Gruppe”, out of which the publishing house Kétos emerged in 2018. Led by Cikán, it focuses on translations of modern Czech classics (www.ketos.at).
In 2000, Cikán’s first play Tragödieninsel premiered at what was then the Spielbar of the Vienna Volkstheater. Menandros & Thaïs, his first novel, was made into a film co-directed by the author and Antonín Šilar (www.menandros.cz). The same directing duo took Cikán’s play Gorgo to Prague’s X10 theatre in 2022.
Cikán’s most recent work as an author is the collection of poetry Blühende Dämonen (2023). Works entitled Die Kinder der Riyun (in German) and Nová časomíra (in Czech) are in preparation.
Foto: Ursula Röck
