Michal Viewegh


Michal Viewegh is a contemporary Czech writer. He writes about romantic relationships of his contemporaries with humour, variously successful irony as well as attempts at deeper meaningfulness; he is sometimes compared to Nick Hornby by his fans.

Sales

His books, since the late 1990s published every spring, usually sell about 50,000 copies each, bringing him an upper-high-class income unparalleled among Czech writers. By his own boastful admissions, his royalties from a successful book are equal to roughly 8 years of an average Czech salary. His 2004 income was CZK four million. His work has been translated into 23 languages.

Awards

He is the recipient of the Jiří Orten Award and the Magnesia Litera Readers’ award.

Political views

Viewegh is a political adversary of the former Czech president Václav Klaus. In some of his recent novels this attitude has been strongly and pointedly manifested.

Scandals

In his column for Lidove noviny published on 1 October 2018, Viewegh criticised Christine Blayse Ford's allegations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh on the grounds that "putting her in an empty room, groping her, covering her mouth while trying to undress her" was an "innocent high-school petting" and that he thanks God that he, as a pubescent, was free to grope his female schoolmates without endangering his future career, without any "North-American cow" complaining about it.. He has been criticised in turn by criminologist Pavel Houdek in a published open letter, that his views are what makes victims of sexual abuse keep it to themselves.

Health issues

In late 2012 Viewegh suffered a traumatic aortic rupture and his health condition was serious. His difficult recovery is detailed in his "diary-novel" Můj život po životě

Works online in English