Michal Viewegh is one of the most popular contemporary Czech writers. He is the most published Czech author of all time, with over a million books sold. In 1993 he earned the prestigious Jiří Orten award for Czech writers 30 years old or younger. Viewegh survived a traumatic aortic rupture in 2012. Life Michal Viewegh was born in Prague on March 31st, 1962. His mother is a lawyer. His father was a chemical engineer, and then the mayor of Sázava. Viewegh graduated from Benešov Gymnazium in 1980. He studied economics at the Prague University of Economics and Business, but dropped out. He then completed a degree in Czech and in pedagogy at Charles University in the Philosophy department in 1988. While in school, Viewegh began publishing short stories in Mladá fronta, with his first story published in 1983. After graduating from university in 1988, Viewegh worked as an elementary school teacher until 1993. In 1993, he was awarded the Jiří Orten award for young Czech authors. For two years, he worked as an editor at the publishing company Český spisovatel; after that, he was able to support himself as a professional author. Viewegh has been married twice, first to Jaroslava Macková, with whom he has one daughter, Michaela. In 2002, he married Veronika Vieweghová (née Kodytková). They have two daughters, Sára and Barbora. They divorced in 2015. On December 12th, 2012, Viewegh suffered a traumatic aorta rupture. He suffered from depression and memory loss during his rehabilitation and was unable to write. However, it also helped him gain a new perspective on the relative importance of some of his problems before the accident. Viewegh said that when he thinks about the fact that 90% of people with a ruptured aorta do not survive, he does not worry about criticism, the tabloids, or politics anymore. He has lived most of his life in Sázava, a village in central Bohemia. Works Viewegh’s first book was the novella Názory na vraždu (Opinions on a Murder), published in 1990. His first full-length novel was Báječná léta pod psa (The Wonderful Years that Sucked), a semi-autobiographical novel which portrayed Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring in 1968 and the fall of communism in 1989. In 1997, it was adapted into a very successful film, directed by Petr Nikolaev. Viewegh has published novels almost every spring since the late 1990s. He sells around 50,000 copies per book