Jan Trefulka

Trefulka was born in Brno, Czech Republic, where he also died.[1] He attended school with Milan Kundera and the pair remained lifelong friends.

Critical of the communist regime, in 1950 he was expelled from the Czechoslovakian Communist Party for "anti-party activities" along with Kundera. At the same time he was expelled from Charles University in Prague where he was studying literature and aesthetics. Trefulka wrote about his run-in with the communist party in his first novella Pršelo jim štestí (Happiness Rained on Them, 1962). Trefulka was involved with Samizdat - the publishing and distributing of censored literature under communist rule, and was a signatory of Charter 77.

Trefulka found it difficult to find work in the country after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. He spent time unemployed and working as a manual labourer.

After the Velvet Revolution and the downfall of the communist regime in 1989, he became more active in public life, becoming president of the Association of Moravian-Silesian Writers and a member of the first Czech Television Council.

• Happiness Rained on Them (Pršelo jim štěstí) (1962)
• Praise Only for the Fools (O bláznech jen dobré) (1973)
• The Criminal Uprising (Zločin pozdvižen) (1978)
• Seduced and Betrayed (Svedený a opuštěný) (1983)
• A Fool's Reader (Bláznova čítanka) (1998) A collection of Trefulka's work published in Samizdat.

• A Handbook of Czech Prose Writing, 1940-2005 B. R. Bradbrook on 'Google Books' website
• translated 'Atlantis' website
• translated 'Spisovatelé' website

• Jan Trefulka at Czechoslovak book network Baila.net