Jaroslav Rudiš
Writing
Biography
Jaroslav Rudiš (born 8 June 1972 in Turnov) is a Czech writer, journalist and musician. Rudiš became known after publishing his first novel Nebe pod Berlínem ("The Sky under Berlin") in 2002, the tale of a Czech teacher who chooses to leave his job and to start a new life in Berlin, where he plays music in the underground, which – along with the ghosts of suicide jumpers – gains almost mystical importance to him, and joins an indie rock group (which is a semi-autobiographical motive). It was one of the most successful Czech books of recent years. For this novel he received Jiří Orten Award. His collaboration with draughtsman Jaromír 99 led to the publication of three closely connected graphic novels taking place among railway employees, Bílý potok ("White Brook", 2003), Hlavní nádraží ("Central Station", 2004) and Zlaté hory ("Golden Hills"). The trilogy has been adapted into an animated feature film, Alois Nebel, which was released in 2011.
Known For
A portrait of the German-language Czech writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924), a mysterious, strange and solitary individual, but also a visionary creator.
Do You Know Kafka?
Series about a detective duo investigating in Prague
Der Prag-Krimi
A train dispatcher encounters a mute stranger who appears out of nowhere, and finds himself mysteriously involved with a murder in Poland. The end of the eighties in the twentieth century. Alois Nebel works as a dispatcher at the small railway station in Bílý Potok, a remote village on the Czech–Polish border. He's a loner, who prefers old timetables to people, and he finds the loneliness of the station tranquil – except when the fog rolls in. Then he hallucinates, sees trains from the last hundred years pass through the station. They bring ghosts and shadows from the dark past of Central Europe. Alois can’t get rid of these nightmares and eventually ends up in sanatorium. In the sanatorium, he gets to know The Mute, a man carrying an old photograph who was arrested by the police after crossing the border. No one knows why he came to Bílý Potok or who he’s looking for, but it is his past that propels Alois on his journey…
Alois Nebel
Overwhelmed by a world he can no longer control, a quarrelsome worker in his fifties tries to preserve the integrity of his neighbourhood...
National Street
The Grand Hotel is a place between heaven and earth. A place where clouds and human desires float by. This metaphorical story is set in a famous hotel towering above Liberec. Working there, as both guardian and prisoner, is Fleischman, a maintenance man and amateur meteorologist who wanted to be as close to heaven as life would allow him. And you can't get any higher than that.
Grandhotel
The band Tataturk was one of the best and most progressive Czech rock bands of the 1990s. Everyone knew hits such as Černej písek (Black Sand) and Vánoce na poušti (Christmas in the Desert). They sold out Strahov Stadium, played with U2, and even performed at Václav Havel's birthday party. They were also popular in Turkmenistan, where their hits became a symbol of the "Turkmen Spring." Where might they be today if a bomb hadn't exploded at the airport when they were flying to Turkmenistan for a tour...