Eva Kantůrková

Kantůrková was born in Prague in 1930. Influenced by her communist father, she became involved in the communist youth movement, but the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 caused her to reject the communist agenda. In 1970, she quit the communist party and joined the Czech dissident movement; she was blacklisted as a writer, her completed novels were removed from library shelves, and two screenplays she was developing were put on hiatus. Together with many prominent Czech writers and cultural figures, she signed the Charter 77 manifesto and, in 1979, she published We Have Met in this Book, a collection of interviews with Czech women dissidents. The publication of this book abroad led to her arrest on 5 June 1981. She was charged with "subversion" and held without trial for ten months. The experience inspired her 1984 novel My Companions in the Bleak House.

After the Velvet Revolution, Kantůrková served as president of the Czech Writer's Union and was a staff member in the Ministry of Culture. Zdenek Sirový's film Funeral Ceremonies, which was based on her novel, was released in 1990 after being banned for 20 years.