Jan Drda

Jan Drda was born April 4, 1915, in Příbram and was the son of a laborer and organizational founder. His parents divorced and his father became an alcoholic and abandoned his children. In 1921, Drda's mother died during the birth of his second sibling. Drda and his sister, Marie, were educated by their grandfather. In 1934, Drda graduated from Charles University in Prague with a degree in philosophy.

From a young age, Drda wrote stories and dramatic plays for Ochotnické divadlo, and he began contributing to newspapers and magazines from 1932. Between 1937 and 1942, Drda was the editor of Lidové noviny (People's News) to which he contributed feuilletons (English: serials) and reporting.

Drda had been a Communist Party sympathizer since before the Second World War, and supported the blacklisting of some writers who were against Communism.[2] He became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1945. After February 1948, he held various cultural and political offices, was part of several foreign delegations, including to South America, and was elected to the National Assembly, representing the Prague district, where he remained a member until 1960.[3] In 1955, he received the Order of the Republic. From 1949 to 1956, he was Chairman of the communist-controlled Union of Czechoslovak Writers. Jan Drda and Václav Řezáč, known by the derisive nickname "Drzáč", were against Catholic authors, such as Jakub Deml, Jan Zahradníček, Václav Renč and Bohuslav Reynek.

Drda contributed to many Czechoslovak films, as both a screenwriter and story author. He is credited as a writer on more than 20 films.[4] His screenplay for the 1960 film Higher Principle (Czech: Vyšší princip), based on one of his short stories in Silent Barricade (Czech: Němá barikáda), was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize by the International Federation of Film Critics at the Locarno Festival in Switzerland.[5]

In the final years of his life, Drda was the editor-in-chief of Svět práce (English: The World of Work), which he founded in 1968.[6] Drda fell out of favour after condemning the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and the subsequent occupation, and was expelled from the Communist Party.[7] He died on November 28, 1970 in Dobříš and was buried at a local cemetery. His funeral was attended by about two thousand people.

• List of Czech writers