Michal Šanda

Biography

In 2012, before Christmas, Michal Šanda put everything he had written up to then on his website for free download. For an author who lives by his books, this was an unusual step at the time.

He was born on 10 December 1965 in Prague, in the district around the church of St Apollinaire; his childhood was spent in Smíchov. After his school-leaving exams at the Jan Neruda Grammar School he changed occupations several times, working as a bricklayer and as a bookshop assistant. Since 1991 he has been an archivist at the Arts and Theatre Institute (Divadelní ústav), later the National Institute of Culture, and he remains in that post. Alongside this he has done editorial work and cultural journalism, and was editor-in-chief of the magazine “Dobrá adresa”.

He began to publish in Czech literary magazines, among them “Tvar”, “Literární noviny” and “Psí víno”. His first book of poems, “Stoa”, appeared in 1994. The poems are experimental and playful, with elements of visual poetry in the Dada manner. Šanda built his later books in different ways, and to my mind this is his main trait. Almost every one is written in a new genre and a new manner, which is why he is now described as a postmodern author. More than once he has resorted to mystification. In 2017 the second half of the print run of the book “Údolí” (“The Valley”) was issued under the name of a fictitious author, Ondřej Böhm.

His books of verse appeared up to 2015: “Ošklivé příběhy z krásných slov” (1996), “Metro” (1998), “Dvacet deka ovaru” (1998), “Remington pod kredencí” (2009) and “Rabování samozvaného generála Rona Zacapy v hostinci U Hrocha” (2015). “Býkárna” (2006) was written together with Milan Ohnisko and Ivan Wernisch. With Wernisch he also brought out “Jakápak prdel” in 2015.

His prose began in 2000 with the book “Blues 1890–1940”. It was followed by “Sudamerická romance” (2003), “Kecanice” (2006), “Sebrané spí si” (2012), “Masná kuchařka mistra řezníka z Nelahozevsi Antonína Dvořáka” (2016), “Umyvadlo plné vajglů” (2020), “Mozek z blázna” (2023), “Grotesky” (2024) and “Cvak!” (2025). In “Dopisy” (2009) his text sits alongside letters by Karel Havlíček Borovský. In 2013 came an anthology he compiled of unusual old books, “Špacírkou přes čenich!”. The short-story book “Hemingwayův býk” (2018) was nominated for the Magnesia Litera prize in 2019. In 2022 a volume of 1,024 pages, “Generál v umyvadle plném blues”, was published in Brno; it covers his writing from his debut to 2020.

For the theatre Šanda wrote “Španělské ptáčky” (2006) and “Sorento” (2011). For “Sorento” he received the Ondřej Pavelka Golden Pen award in December 2013. Several of his plays have been staged by Czech theatres or performed as radio plays; in 2008 the radio play “Bluesmeni” appeared.

A separate strand is his books for children and teenagers: “Merekvice” (2008), “Oskarovy rybářské trofeje” (2014), “Rukulíbám” (2020), “Kruh” and “Čtverec” (2023 and 2024) and others. The best known of them, “Tibbles” (2021), won the 2021 Muriel Award in the Czech Republic as the best comic book for children. In 2022 it was honoured at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair with the Bologna Ragazzi Award (BRAW Amazing Bookshelf), and it was included among the hundred best children’s books in the world. The English edition, “Tibbles the Cat”, won the Blueberry Award 2023 in the United States for the best children’s book about nature and the climate.