Pavel Řezníček

One of the original Czech Surrealists, poet and prose writer Pavel Řezníček was born on 30 January 1942 in Blansko, Czechoslovakia.

He entered the tumultuous Czech literary scene with the staging of his own surrealistic show Devil's Tail is a Bicycle. Composed of poems by André Breton, Benjamin Péret, Salvador Dalí and Tristan Tzara, the work opened in Brno in 1965.

Since then, his vision has remained fiercely surrealistic. In 1974 he began the oldest Czech samizdat magazine Cigar, which is published to this day. Before 1989, Řezníček's writing appeared solely in samizdat publications within Czechoslovakia; he found a much wider audience abroad, however, especially in France where Milan Kundera wrote the preface to the French edition of his novel The Ceiling (translated as Le plafond).

resources on the web

Preface to The Ceiling (1986)
Milan Kundera's preface to the French translation of Řezníček's novel, Le Plafond (Gallimard, 1986) is an excellent introduction to his work. The essay was translated into English for the Prague Writers Festival, June 2007, by Paul Kahn and Dominique Negel.
http://www.pwf.cz/en/features/282.html 

Řezníček Feature, Prague Writers Festival 2007
A selection of Řezníček's work in English.
http://www.pwf.cz/en/reznicek/ 

Watches
A story by Řezníček translated in English by G.S. Evans, published in Cafe Irreal #14
http://home.sprynet.com/~awhit/reznicek.htm