Patrik Ouředník (1957) is one of the best selling and most popular Czech writers of our time in the world. His book Europeana is being published in 38 languages, and is thus the most translated Czech work of the last 30 years. His books gets wide appraisal and are regularly nominated for various literary prizes. Ouředník himself was honoured several times, for instance with the Tom Stoppard Prize 2013 and the Czech State Award for Literature 2014.

Europeana has been put on stage in numerous countries e.g. by the world famous director Heiner Goebbels. In 2020 the Royal Shakespeare Company prepared a stage production of Europeana, but that had to be cancelled due to covid. Recently it was succesfully put on stage in Finland, Sweden and Germany

Ouředník spent his youth in Prague. In the 1970s he participated in the activities of the Jazz Section (an independent cultural organization), and in 1979 he signed a petition of VONS (Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted) for the release of political prisoners in Czechoslovakia, which closed his access to university studies. He held a number of different jobs, including bookstore clerk, archivist, storekeeper, orderly, mailman, and domestic worker. At the same time, he was active in chess. In 1984, he emigrated to France. From 1986 to 1998 he served as editor and head of the literature section of the quarterly L’Autre Europe. In 1992 he was instrumental in founding the Free University of Nouallaguet, and he has lectured there since 1995.

He is at home in many genres. From novels and poetry to essays and linguistic works, including a dictionary of Czech slang. He is famous for his precise and inventive use of language, and many of his works excel in dry humour. Besides his alternativethe 20th century in the text Europeana (in a “novel without a narrator”), Ouředník also tackles ideological stereotypes and conventions in Příhodná chvíle, 1855 (An Opportune Moment, 1855) (2006), whose theme is the founding of settlements on the American continent by Europeans eager to create free communities independent of the European context. He returns to the Czech Republic in Ad acta (Case Closed) (2006), a “metaphysical thriller”, an apparent detective story with retired characters, but in reality mainly a sarcastic account of Czech post-communist society. In his essay on literary utopias across Western history, Utopus to byl, kdo učinil mě ostrovem (Utopus It Was Who Made Me an Island) (2010), Ouředník traces the history of thinking about society from Homer to 19th-century social utopias and contemporary dystopias.

Novels

Rok čtyřiadvacet (Year Twenty-Four)
Volvox Globator, Prague (1995)

Europeana – Stručné dějiny dvacátého věku (Europeana – A Brief History of the Twentieth Century)
Paseka, Prague (2001)

Příhodná chvíle, 1855 (The Opportune Moment, 1855)
Torst, Prague (2006)

Ad acta (Case Closed)
Torst, Prague (2006)

La fin du monde n’aurait pas eu lieu / Konec světa se prý nekonal (The End of the World Might Not Have Taken Place)
Allia, Paris (2017)

Histoire de France † À notre chère disparue (A History of France – For Our Dearly Departed)
Allia, Paris (2014)

Poetry

Anebo (Either)
Volvox Globator Publishers, Prague (1992)

Neřkuli (Let Alone)
Mladá fronta Publishers, Prague (1996)

Dům bosého (The house of barefoot)
Paseka Publishers, Prague (2004)

Essays

Utopus to byl, kdo učinil mě ostrovem (It Was Utopus Who Made Me an Island)
Torst, Prague (2010)

Hledání ztraceného jazyka (In Search of the Lost Language)
Zdeněk Susa (1997)

Svobodný prostor jazyka (On the Free Exercise of Language)
Torst, Prague (2013)

Correspondances / Correspondencias – Angel Erro & Patrik Ouředník
Erein, San Sebastian (2016)

Antialkoran
Volvox Globator, Prague (2017)

Linguistic works

Šmírbuch jazyka českého. Slovník nekonvenční češtiny
(Rough-book of the Czech Language: A Dictionary of Unconventional Czech)
Edice K, Paris (1988)

Aniž jest co nového pod sluncem. Slova, rčení a úsloví biblického původu
(And There Is Nothing New Under the Sun: A Dictionary of Words, Idioms and Phrases from Biblical Origin)
Mladá fronta, Prague (1994)

Klíč je ve výčepu. Z folklóru WC (The Key Is At The Bar. WC Folklore)
Volvox Globator, Prague (2000)

French

Des 112 façons desquelles on peut faire rouler un tonneau à huile (co-author Jiří Pelán)
Confédération du travail syndicaliste, Limoges (1999)

Des 55 espèces de brodequins dont on peut s’entourer les pieds en hiver (co-author Jiří Pelán)
Assemblée régionale des métiers, Limoges (2001)

Various

Pojednání o případném pití vína, totiž velikém a ustavičném (A Discourse on Possible Wine Drinking, Namely Grandiose and Continuous)
Volvox Globator, Prague (1995)

O princi Čekankovi, jak putoval za princeznou, a o všelijakých dobrodružstvích, která se mu při tom přihodila (On Prince Chicory, His Journey to the Princess, and All Kinds of Adventures That Happened to Him Along the Way)
Volvox Globator, Prague (1997)