Miroslav Jindra (b. 1929, Prague) was educated at Charles University in Prague, where he received his PhD in English in 1953. Since 1954, he has translated more than 80 books by British, American, Canadian and Australian writers, including: Kingsley Amis, Margaret Atwood, William Boyd, Michael Cunningham, Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, Oliver Goldsmith (The Vicar of Wakefield), Joseph Heller (Catch-22), John le Carré, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, William Gilmore Simms, C. P. Snow, Tom Stoppard, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut and Fay Weldon. In recent years, he has often translated poetry, including Robert Browning’s ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’and Leonard Cohen’s two collections, Flowers for Hitler and Book of Longing. His academic career, in both literary studies and linguistics, has spanned more than 55 years, from 1953 until the present. In 2000, he retired from the post of Readership in English, American and Canadian Studies at Charles University, but continues to teach part-time at several Czech universities. He is active as a literary editor and reviewer. In 1993 he spent a term as Guest Professor at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba. In October 2009, the Czech Ministry of Culture awarded him the annual State Prize for Literary Translation for his lifelong work in this field.
