A master storyteller of attractive tales of human fates and relationships set in both past and present, writing very readable books mostly full of humour. She is a unique and distinctive author who has mastered the art of observation and characterisation; this mastery is seen to greatest effect in her typically apt ironic shortcuts and dialogues.
The works of Irena Dousková have been published in nine languages – English, German, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish, Slovenian, Belarussian, Spanish (in Mexico) and Bosnian. Rights are sold to Croatia and Latvia.
Her loose trilogy following the life of Helena Součková – Hrdý Budžes, Oněgin byl Rusák and Darda has enjoyed the greatest popularity. All three books have been adapted for stage by the author, and all these productions are still running successfully at Czech theatres. For her starring role in Hrdý Budžes, which has now seen more than six hundred performances, Barbora Hrzánová has been awarded the highest Czech drama prize – the Thalie Award.
The first book to be translated was B. Proudew (Hrdý Budžes). It has been translated into English, German, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish, Slovenian, Belarussian, Spanish (in Mexico) and Bosnian.

Biography
Irena Dousková was born in 1964 to a family of actors in Příbram. Since 1976 she has lived in Prague, where she completed her secondary education at the Nad štolou Grammar School and graduated from the Charles University Faculty of Law, though she never entered the legal profession, instead taking various jobs usually associated in some way with journalism. Over the last few years she has been working freelance and focusing on her writing.

Bibliography:
Pražský zázrak – A Prague Miracle (co-authored, 1992)
Goldstein píše dceři – Goldstein Writes to his Daughter (1997, 2006)
Hrdý Budžes – B. Proudew (1998, 2002)
Někdo s nožem – Someone with a Knife (2000)
Doktor Kott přemítá – Doctor Kott Wonders (2002)
Čím se liší tato noc – What Makes This Night Different (2004)
Oněgin byl Rusák – Onegin was a Rusky (2006)
O bílých slonech – White Elephants (2008)
Bez Karkulky – Without the Riding Hood (2009)

Dramatizations:
B. Proudew (2003)
Oněgin was a Rusky (2008)

IN TRANSLATION
B. Proudew
The most succesful title by Irena Dousková, over 65.000 copies sold in the Czech Republic alone.
The story of this book is told by a young girl who is at once smart and naive. Helenka guides us through the first years of the “government” of the communist president Husák, describing comic as well as less amusing episodes and situations involving children and grown-ups in one town in the course of a year. The short episodes create a compact story which reveals both the small and greater tragedies of Helenka’s chil­dhood, all presented with a comforting forgiveness.
Summary from the English edition of the book (Pálava Publishing, 2016): Helena Součková, an eight-year-old schoolgirl in a small provincial town, deals not only with the uniquely dismal side of life in communist Czechoslovakia, but also with more than a few universal issues, like death, school dinners, guilt, obtuse teachers, betrayal, love, Jewishness, annoying little brothers, almost absent fathers, cruel classmates, bogus adults, eerie daydreams and nightmares that reflect the society around her. A child of her time, Helena nevertheless rises above it all with her special blend of grit, common sense and dark imaginings, which speak to us today with clarity and power. Helena has come to be a well-known archetype that many can identify with.
Hrdý Budžes is now a firm family favourite in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Central Europe. What has the English-speaking world been missing out on?
More about the book:
An extraordinarily successful, frequently reprinted bestseller. Often repeated on Czech television in its stage adaptation, Hrdý Budžes has come to be one of the most famous Czech prose works published since the Velvet Revolution. In the Czech Republic alone more than 65,000 copies have been sold. The book has also been published in translation in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Belarus, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
From the author's preface in the English edition of the book: „When I started my first year at primary school in Příbram, a district town about fifty kilometres from Prague, in September 1970, my compulsory school attendance began at the same time as that dismal period known as normalization, a time when character was constantly being drained, dignity lost, allegiances turned and lives (particularly professional lives) ruined. (…) That is more or less the background against which the story of my young hero, Helena Součková, is set. It is not a political satire or a panoramic survey of the history of the last century's latter half, but a reflection of all that in our little everyday lives. Like it or not, children, with all their joys and troubles, are influenced and affected by the behaviour of adults, whom they can hardly be expected to fully understand. But then at the same time, they often manage to perceive and identify what is going on around them far more accurately and in focus than the grown-ups around them might guess or would ever be willing to admit.“
Publisher: Hynek 1998, Petrov 2002
ISBN: 80–7227–132–6
168 pp.
Foreign editions: Colibri, Bulgaria, 2005; DTV, Germany, 2006; Kalligram, Hungary, 2006; Zysk i S-ka Wydawnictwo, Poland, 2007; Didakta, Slovenia, 2009; Lohvinau, Belarus, 2013; Književni klub Brčko distrikt BiH, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2015; Komora, Ukraine, 2015
Rights sold to: Pálava Publishing, Czech Republic (in English), 2016; Hena Com, Croatia
In 2006, Irena Dousková published a free continuation of B. Proudew under the title Onegin was a Rusky / Oněgin byl Rusák and another sequel in 2011 (Darda / Darda). Both these books became bestsellers immediately after publishing.

Onegin was a Rusky
Onegin was a Rusky was translated into Hungarian, Polish and Slovenian.
Novel, over 30.000 copies sold in the Czech Republic alone.
This book is a free continuation of B. Proudew, a bestseller which has met with extraordinary success and been through many reprints. In part in thanks to its adaptation for the theatre (shown repeatedly on television), B. Proudew has become one of the best known works of Czech prose to be produced since 1989. Onegin was a Rusky, too, is a tale close to the heart of anyone who can think back to the odd, grey world of Husák's Norma­lization; it is also sure to engage the interest of those who know these twilight years at second-hand only.
In spite of the obstacles placed in her way by the authorities, Helena Součková has succeeded in getting to grammar school. And although the cards fate deals her are difficult to play, she battles gamely to reach an understanding of her inner world and the world of hypocrisy around her.
Like B. Proudew, Onegin was a Rusky is a highly personal tale replete with autobiographical reference and a tragi-comic mosaic of a time which the passing years have done little to deprive of its montrosity.
The degenerate, corrupt shambles which was the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic is presented here in all its wretched nakedness, and that this is shown seemingly by the way makes it all the more powerful. Quite simply, Irena Dousková has again succeeded in writing a wonderful novel which is bound to captivate a very wide readership.

Theatre adaptation: Divadlo v Dlouhé, 2008, audio book released in 2009 by Supraphon
Publisher: Druhé město 2006
ISBN: 80–7227–244–6
260 pp.
Foreign editions: Hungarian (Kalligram, 2009), Polish (Mozaika, 2010), Slovenian (Didakta, 2010)

Goldstein Writes to his Daughter / Goldstein píše dceři
Novel in letters. A book of subtle epistles sent from Israel by an ageing film director, the emigrant Goldstein, to his daughter in Prague. The letters gradually shed light on the course of Goldstein´s life as well as the inconsistencies in his relationship with his daughter. This relationship has been established far too late; the reader compares his idealised imaginations with the reality of their actual and often conflicting encounters. This tragicomic story of love and self-love takes place in the recent past –in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Publisher: Melantrich 1997, Druhé město 2006
Foreign editions: Spanish (Luzam, Mexico, 2014)
Rights sold to: Luzam, Mexico