Among the authors who broke into the Czech literary scene after 1989, the so-called "post-Kundera era" stands out above all Jiří Kratochvil. Despite having remained unpublished for a long time, and having been published only clandestinely by the samizdat system until the Velvet Revolution, Kratochvil has later received several prestigious literary awards: the Tom Stoppard Awards (1991), Egon Hostovský (1995), Karel Čapek (PEN Club, 1998) and Jaroslav Seifert (1999), among others. Born in Brno in 1940, during the time of Normalization that followed the events of 1968, Kratochvil was forced to perform all kinds of trades little consistent with his literary vocation, as crane operator, night watchman of a poultry farm or telephone operator . In 1983 he started working in the regional center of conservation of heritage, and in 1991 in the radio creation department of Radio Brno. Since 1995 he has been exclusively dedicated to literature. Kratochvil is particularly known for his trilogy formed by The Bear's Novel (1990), In the middle of the night a song (1992, Impedimenta, 2010) and Avion (1995), as well as his carnivalesque dilogy composed by Siamese History (1996) and Immortal History (1997). Very influenced by the work of Milan Kundera and the magical realism, his work constitutes one of the key pieces of Czech postmodernism. His novels and stories, far from traditional narrative techniques, contain grotesque, fantastic, bizarre and mysterious motifs, and are almost always closely related to the city of Brno. Impedimenta has also published his novel The Promise of Kamil Modracek (2009; Impedimenta, 2013) and Good evening, sweet dreams (Impedimenta, 2017).