Josef Škvorecký

**Biography** Born in Náchod, Czechoslovakia, Škvorecký graduated in 1943 from the Reálné gymnasium in his native Náchod. For two years during the Second World War he was a slave labourer in a German aircraft factory. After the war, he began to study at the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University in Prague, but after his first term he moved to the Faculty of Arts, where he studied Philosophy and graduated in 1949.[2] In 1951 he gained a Ph.D. in Philosophy. …