Zdeněk Jirotka

Zdeněk Jirotka (January 7, 1911 – April 12, 2003) was a Czech writer of radio-broadcast plays and author of humorous novels, short stories, and feuilletons. He was born in Ostrava (North Moravia), sat for the leaving examination at the secondary industrial school in Hradec Králové (East Bohemia) in 1933 and then joined the Army where he served until 1940. After the Nazis had annexed the Czechoslovakia, Jirotka worked for the Public Works Ministry and in 1942, when his most famous novel Saturnin earned him a great success, he became a full-time writer. Among other newspapers and magazines that Jirotka contributed for were: the Lidové noviny (1940-1945), the Svobodné noviny (1945-1951), and the Dikobraz (1951-1953 and after 1962).

Works

• Saturnin, originally published in 1942 (translated into English in 1970), a humorous and satirical story of a charismatic servant, Saturnin, who carries out eccentric tasks given by his young employer. The book plays upon words and senses of Czech proverbs. Its characters and events reflect the author's nostalgia for the epoch before World War II.

Literature

• Sehnalová, Kamila. 2013. Comparative analysis of Czech, English, and German proverb in Jirotka's Saturnin. BA thesis, Charles University, Prague. Link to thesis