Jiří Weil

Jiří Weil ( IPA: [jɪr̝iː vaɪl] ; 6 August 1900, Praskolesy – 13 December 1959, Prague) was a Czech writer. He was Jewish. His noted works include the two novels Life with a Star (Život s hvězdou), and Mendelssohn Is on the Roof (Na střeše je Mendelssohn), as well as many short stories, and other novels.

A member of the Czech avant-garde association of artists Devětsil, an award winning novelist, a literary translator, a journalist and a curator, Jiří Weil is only gradually gaining renown after years of relative obscurity. He was the one of the first writers to address the Soviet Purges in a novel, the very first writer to set a novel in a GULAG, and among the first writers to address the fate of Czech Jews in World War II.

Jiří Weil was born in Praskolesy, a village about 40 kilometers outside Prague on August 6, 1900. He was the second son born to upper-middle-class Orthodox Jewish parents. Weil graduated from secondary school in 1919. As a student he had already begun writing mainly verses, but had also begun planning his three-part novel, Město, which he planned to publish under the pseudonym, Jiří Wilde. Upon graduation, Weil was accepted to Charles University in Prague where he entered the Department of Philosophy and also studied Slavic philology and comparative literature. He was a favourite student of F.X. Šalda. He completed his doctoral dissertation, "Gogol and the English Novel of the 18th Century", in 1928.

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