Jan Zábrana was a Czech

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

 writer and translator.

His parents were teachers and politicians persecuted by the communist regime after the communist revolution of 1948

Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948

The Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948 – in Communist historiography known as "Victorious February" – was an event late that February in which the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, with Soviet backing, assumed undisputed control over the government of Czechoslovakia, ushering in over four decades...

: his mother, member of the regional parliament

Parliament

A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...

, was arrested and sentenced to 20 years of prison; his father, mayor of Humpolec

Humpolec

Humpolec is a town in the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic, situated south-east of Prague and roughly halfway between the Czech capital and Brno, on the northwestern edge of the Bohemian-Moravian highlands ....

 before the communist coup, was also sentenced to 20 years in prison. All property of the Zábrana family was confiscated when Jan was nineteen. University studies were prohibited to non-communists, so he tried to study in a Catholic school for priests, but this was prohibited, also.

In the 1950s, Jan worked in blacksmith

Blacksmith

A blacksmith is a person who creates objects from wrought iron or steel by forging the metal; that is, by using tools to hammer, bend, and cut...

 factory and wrote poems and short stories (published after the fall of the communist regime in 1989 in the book Sedm povídek). After 1954, he worked as translator and became one of the best Bohemian translators of 20th century. His interest focused mainly on Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n and American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 literature, including Aksjonov, Bunin, Cvetajeva

Marina Tsvetaeva

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was a Russian and Soviet poet. Her work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature. She lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed it. In an attempt to save her daughter Irina from...

, Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...

, Pasternak

Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...

, Babel

Isaac Babel

Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel was a Russian language journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short story writer. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, Story of My Dovecote, and Tales of Odessa, all of which are considered masterpieces of Russian literature...

, and Platonov

Andrei Platonov

Andrei Platonov was the pen name of Andrei Platonovich Klimentov , a Soviet author whose works anticipate existentialism. Although Platonov was a Communist, his works were banned in his own lifetime for their skeptical attitude toward collectivization and other Stalinist policies...

; and Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

, Graham Greene

Graham Greene

Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...

, Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...

, Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...

, Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

, and Gregory Corso

Gregory Corso

Gregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers...

.

Zábrana also wrote essays (published after 1989). In 1950s, 1970s and 1980s Zábrana was a prohibited author; in 1960s, he could publish a few of his own poetry books: Utkvělé černé ikony 1965, Lynč 1968 and Stránky z deníku 1968, three detective stories (with Josef Škvorecký

Josef Škvorecký

Josef Škvorecký, CM is a leading contemporary Czech writer and publisher who has spent much of his life in Canada. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country...

), and one novel for children. In the persecutions of 1970s and 80s, he worked on poetry and on his diaries, written between 1970 and 1984, published in 1992 under title Celý život.