"The director of Paris Soir came in and said, 'Look, you can start working tomorrow at 12 o'clock. In the meantime, you'd be throwing packets of newspapers from some belt onto a truck, but it would just be the afternoon.' So I hesitated a bit, but at that time I was just living with my father, who had been raising me since I was 13. When I was at the military service, my dad got old age diabetes, but he eventually died of a stroke in 1981. In that year, 1969, I went to the station with my suitcase and then took the train to Belgium. He used to drop me off outside the station and we said goodbye. He parked the car in that year 1969 and bought a platform ticket, then still for 20 halers, and walked with me to the train. And when I said goodbye to him, he said, 'Look, I'll somehow manage here, you should stay there.' I had to give it some consideration, but I came back. And when I saw my dad's joy, he was almost retired by then, that I was back. I probably would have made a bigger career out there, but I didn't regret it."
"We were at the demonstration. Smrkovský was waving at us from the window like this. At that time, the parliament was temporarily in Senovážné Square. Then there was the funeral. I remember Klementinum, the courtyard, it was maybe two or three layers of wreaths and flowers. At that time, the school administration, the rectors in academic gowns. It was a Thursday afternoon, you can't forget it. I didn't listen to the news somehow. We had a seminar on Friday morning with the aforementioned Professor Vodička, so I was writing a paper in the evening and I came at nine o'clock. Everyone already knew that a student had burned himself to death at St. Wenceslas. My feeling was that if anyone should have burned himself, it should be Husák. I associated Palach's death with the burning of those Buddhist monks. Occasionally an American would burn himself because of the Vietnam War, so I took it as this form of extreme protest, etc. And then there was Zajíc... I thought, if someone of our generation sacrifices themselves like that. Well, and so it didn't dawn on me until that 1989, the way that it had worked out, that it wasn't in vain. At the time, it seemed to them like a gesture that wouldn't move the nation or the top [communists]. But in that 1989, it dawned on me. It's still there, it´s just history."
"It was already political at the school. We read Chuk and Gek and Little Bobeš [propaganda books, trans.]. I have memories of the Christmas party in first grade in 1952. I was playing a dwarf then. Then I quite remember the spring of 1953. We used to watch newsreels as boys. We were terribly entertained by the funerals of Stalin and Gottwald because there were soldiers there and they were drawing swords, and we played. In those days you could buy a tin sword, so we played. My grandmother used to call out of the window, 'Stop calling Čepička, don't keep calling Čepička.' We didn't know why, because he was a minister who wasn't very popular."
Bohuslav Mánek was born on 18 October 1946 in Hradec Králové. His father was originally a small tradesman, a decorator, who after 1948 worked as an operator in the cooperative company Malba. His mother fell ill with multiple sclerosis and died when he was 13 years old. He graduated from the grammar school in Hradec Králové and then in 1969 he graduated from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague, majoring in English and Czech, and in 1971 he received his PhD.
In that year, however, the circumstances at the faculty deteriorated greatly due to normalisation and Bohuslav Mánek joined the newly opened Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové. In 1977 he married his former student from the faculty with whom he has a son and a daughter. In 1992 he moved to the English Department at the Faculty of Education of the University of Hradec Králové. In the same year he was habilitated as an associate professor of English literature, and in 2008 he was appointed professor. He teaches English and American literature or the history of translation into Czech. He is a recognized expert, lecturing at several faculties and universities, he is a member of the scientific boards of several universities, and a member of the editorial boards of professional journals. He has also worked with the accreditation committee of the Ministry of Education.
As an active translator, he focused on poetry translation, audiovisual translation for film and television and translation of professional texts. In 2021, he received the Annual Award of the International Federation of Foreign Language Teachers. He still lives in Hradec Králové.
