Stanislav Beran: ...they don’t have any other choice
– Czechia
Born in Jindřichův Hradec in 1977, Stanislav Beran studied the Czech language and history at the Faculty of Education of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. He started his career as a teacher, but now works as a manager in a pharmaceutical company. His early work focused on poetry (Zlodům/Evilhouse, 2002); he later moved towards prose such as Až umřeš, nikdo už ti nebude chtít sahat na prsa (When You’re Dead, Nobody Will Want to Touch Your Breasts, 2007), Hliněné dny (Clay Days, 2009), Žena lamželezo a polykač ohně (A Strongwoman and a Fire-eater, 2013), Vyšehradští jezdci (Riders of Vyšehrad, 2016) and Kocovina (Hangover, 2019). “In Hangover, the former Sudetenland is depicted as a place where people stay only when they don’t have any other choice. A place full of misery whose inhabitants have lost interest in the outside world and started resembling animals,” says the annotation.