Kafka, Švejk, Čapek’s robots and the novelists who wrote through occupation — a guide to Czech literature.
Czech literature is shaped by a recurring problem: a small language, repeatedly occupied, in which writing honestly was often dangerous. What came out of that is a body of work heavy on absurdity, black humour and the quiet subversion of authority — and one novelist so famous that his name became an adjective in dozens of languages.
Franz Kafka (1883–1924)
Wrote in German, lived in Prague, worked in insurance and asked his friend Max Brod to burn everything. Brod published it instead. הניסוי, The Castle ו The Metamorphosis came out after his death. He is buried in the New Jewish Cemetery in Žižkov.
Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923)
The Good Soldier Švejk is the funniest anti-war novel ever written and the most Czech book that exists: its hero survives an empire by being so relentlessly, cheerfully obtuse that authority gives up on him. Hašek died before finishing it.
Karel Čapek (1890–1938)
Journalist, novelist and playwright who gave the world robot. War with the Newts is a savage satire of European appeasement, written as the 1930s darkened. He died of pneumonia months before the Gestapo came for him.
Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997)
Closely Watched Trains, Too Loud a Solitude. Wrote in long unbroken sentences that read like overheard pub monologue — which is roughly where he gathered his material.
Milan Kundera (1929–2023)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being made him the best-known Czech novelist alive. He emigrated to France in 1975 and eventually wrote in French, a decision Czech readers argued about for decades.
Václav Havel (1936–2011)
Absurdist playwright, dissident, prisoner, then president. There is no comparable career anywhere in twentieth-century Europe.
שאלות נפוצות
What should I read before visiting Prague?
The Good Soldier Švejk for the humour, Kafka’s הניסוי for the atmosphere, Hrabal for the pubs.
Did Kafka write in Czech?
No, in German. Prague was a trilingual city — Czech, German and Yiddish — and Kafka belonged to its German-speaking Jewish minority.
Is Švejk really that important here?
Yes. The character is a national reference point, and the pub U Kalicha in the novel is a real address.
Read more: books about Prague, Kafka’s grave ו famous Czech people.
Last reviewed in August 2026.
