Frano Král

Born Mar. 9, 1903, in Barton, Ohio; died Jan. 3, 1955, in Bratislava. Slovak writer; People’s Artist of Czechoslovakia (1953). Member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia since 1921. Son of an emigrant worker.

Král’ worked as a herdsman, laborer, and teacher. His first collection of poems, Black Paint on the Palette, was published in 1930. He is the author of the novels The Thorny Path (1934; Russian translation, 1953) and The Meeting (1937; banned by the censors). His civic lyric poetry of the 1930’s (the collection The Postcards, 1938) and his poetic diary (the collection From Night Until Dawn, 1945), written while he was a member of the underground struggling against the fascist regime in Slovakia, are imbued with humanitarian enthusiasm. His documentary novel It Will Be as It Never Was (1950) and his book of poems On the Path of Spring (1–52) deal with the changes in Czechoslovakia after the victory of the people’s democracy.