Ota Pavel would have been 90 today: Honoring the author of 'How I Came to Know Fish'

One of the most important Czech writers of the twentieth century, Ota Pavel, who died prematurely in 1973 at the age of forty-three, would celebrate his 90th birthday on Thursday, July 2, 2020.

“Ota Pavel is the essence of Czech culture for me. I have the impression that the way he felt, all Czechs would like to feel. In his stories, humanity is with all the twists and turns, love for the homeland and nature, beauty, sadness, and fun, and all this is served with incredible sincerity, ease, and amazing literary quality.”

Throughout the slender volume, Pavel shares poignant stories about fishing the Berounka river as well as stealing fish from his family’s own pond during the Nazi occupation.

Pavel was a sports journalist who suffered a mental breakdown while covering the 1964 Olympics in Innsbruck. He spent most of the rest of his life in mental hospitals, where he wrote the book which was first published in 1971. He is buried in Prague at the New Jewish cemetery in Žižkov, next to his father.

“It reflects the basic poetics of the Czech country. Beautiful nature where one can retreat in the toughest times. And that is the most important — escape to beloved nature because it gives a person the opportunity to find beauty in themselves. What would the river be if there was no sound of a harmonica behind the water?”