Petr Král is a Czech writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

. Having graduated from FAMU

Film and TV School of The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague

The Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague or FAMU is one of the oldest film schools in Europe. Located in Prague, Czech Republic, FAMU was founded in 1946 as one of three branches of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague...

, he worked as an editor in the Orbis publishing house, where he focused on a line of books about film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 and film-makers. In 1968, he emigrated to France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 where he worked in a gallery

Art gallery

An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...

, a photo shop, as a teacher, interpreter, translator, screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 author, reviewer and so on. In 1984 he lived in Québec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

. From 1990 to 1991 he was a cultural councillor by the Czech embassy in Paris. He translates from and to French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 (mainly modern poetry). He edited several anthologies. Since April 2006, he resides in Prague.

Works

Petr Král started writing under the influence of surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, but since 1970s, his books show the fact that being fulfilled is something that the surrealist method cannot provide him. He writes about eternal longing which is being nourished by itself, and perhaps leads to consuming the person who yearns. Král's emblematic words can be: "We don't die, it's much worse: we vanish. In other words, we never were. There is no reality."

• Vlasta Burian
  Vlasta Burian
  Josef Vlastimil Burian, better known as Vlasta Burian, was a Czech stage and film actor, singer, comedian, footballer and a film director...
  
  (with A. Král), 1969
• Prázdno světa, 1986
• Svědek stmívání, 1987
• Éra živých, 1989
• P. S. čili Cesty do ráje, 1990
• Právo na šedivou, 1991
• Pocit předsálí v aixské kavárně, 1991
• Med zatáček čili Dovětek k dějinám, 1992
• Voskovec
  Jirí Voskovec
  Jiří Voskovec was a Czech-American actor, playwright, dramatist, director, translator, and poet...
  
   a Werich
  Jan Werich
  Jan Werich was a Czech actor, playwright and writer.-Life:Between 1916 to 1924 he attended "reálné gymnasium" in Křemencová Street in Prague...
  
  čili Hvězdy klobouky, 1993
• Tyršovské
  Sokol
  The Sokol movement is a youth sport movement and gymnastics organization first founded in Czech region of Austria-Hungary, Prague, in 1862 by Miroslav Tyrš and Jindřich Fügner...
  
   přeháňky, 1994
• Fotografie v surrealismu, 1994
• Arsenál, 1994
• Soukromý život, 1996
• Pařížské sešity, 1996
• Mramor se jí studený (anthology of the Belgian Surrealist movement, as editor), 1996
• Staronový kontinent, 1997
• Chiméry a exil, 1998
• Groteska čili Morálka šlehačkového dortu, 1998
• Praha, 2000
• Pro anděla, 2000
• Základní pojmy, 2002
• Anthologie de la poésie tchèque contemporaine, 2002 (as editor, published in France by Gallimard)
• Bar Příroda čili Budoucnost 5 km, 2004
• Masiv a trhliny, 2004
• Přesuny, 2005
• Arco a jiné prózy, 2005
• Hm čili Míra omylu, 2006
• Úniky a návraty (interview with Petr Král by Radim Kopáč), 2006
• Notions de base, 2005 (published in English as Working Knowledge, translated by Frank Wynne
  Frank Wynne
  Frank Wynne is an Irish literary translator and writer.Born in Co. Sligo, Ireland, he worked as a comics editor at Fleetway and later at Deadline magazine . He worked for a time at AOL before becoming a literary translator...
  
  )
• Enquête sur des lieux, 2007
• Hum ou Marge d'erreur, 2007

External links

• Petr Král in the internet Dictionary of Czech Literature, in Czech
• Petr Král: Bio, excerpts, interviews and articles in the archives of the Prague Writers' Festival
• Poems and translations, in Czech