Kozák, Jan

Born Mar. 25, 1921, in Roudnice. Czech writer and public figure. Member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC) since 1945. Son of a worker.

Kozák graduated from the Higher Party School of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1951. He taught party history at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the CPC. In 1972 he was made chairman of the Union of Czech Writers. Kozák’s first book was the collection of poems Looking Into Windows, which was published in 1941. The main subject of Kozák’s prose writings is the socialist transformation of the Slovak village. He is the author of the book Hot Breath (1961), which includes one of his most important novellas—Mariana Radvaková (published separately in 1962; Russian translation, 1963). Among his other works are the collection Léchka (Trap, 1968), the novels The Strong Arm (1966) and St. Michael (1971; K. Gottwald State Prize, 1972), and Hunting on the Bambuika (1970), a collection of travel notes about Soviet Siberia.