Ondřej Štindl
Ondřej Štindl (born 1966) is a Czech writer, journalist, film and music critic, screenwriter and а DJ, known for his contributions to contemporary Czech literature and media. He studied at the Faculty of Education at Charles University in Prague. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, he co-founded Radio 1, which was initially called Radio Stalin and began broadcasting in 1990. The radio was initially unauthorized, but was later legalized. Štindl was known as the
He began his career in journalism in the early 1990s, with articles for the magazine "Revolver Revue". He also worked for the newspaper "LIdových novinách", then for the BBC Czech correspondent, for the magazine "Týden", as well as for the newspaper "Deník N", where in 2022 he took a job in the new cultural section.
Štindl is the author of several novels, including: "Mondschein" (2012), "To the Border" (2016), "Until Your Head Turns" (2020), "So Much Ash" (2022). He wrote the screenplays for the film "Pouta" (2010) and the TV series "World Under the Head" (2017), for which he received the Czech Lion Award for Best Screenplay.
He is a monarchist by conviction. In 1999 he was one of the signatories of the monarchist declaration ”On the Threshold of the New Millennium” by writer Petr Placák . In 2020, he received the prestigious "Ferdinand Peroutka" award for his journalistic work, which recognizes his great role in the Czech media and culture.
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So Much Ash (Tolik popela)
Translation to Macedonian: Margareta Karajanova
"Antolog", Skopje, 2025
Prague in the first half of 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kristof Mraz is overwhelmed by a new feeling. He is forced to ask himself difficult questions that until then, he had brushed under the rug: to reexamine the meaning of life, and perhaps the existence of God, to face his life and the losses he has suffered, to open up to the possibility of love, to stop living in a “lukewarm” way.
Suddenly he finds himself at a crossroads in life, meeting a young leftist intellectual Kristina, and then Kamil – a guru with a strange connection to his deceased sister. The looming pandemic changes his life, making the possibility of the end of the world more real than ever before. Kristof moves towards his own “personal apocalypse”, haunted by melancholy, grotesque, memories and dark premonitions. He becomes a hesitant actor in a story that could be a great revelation – or a cruel cosmic joke. And maybe it's a love story.
This book was the Czech representative for the European Union Prize for Literature in 2023.