Czech author Josef Skvorecky, who took a stand against communist authorities in his native country by publishing banned works, has died aged 87.
His wife Zdena Salivarova told the Czech CTK news agency that he passed away on Tuesday in Toronto, Canada.
The writer fled there after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion and founded an agency that published books by dissident authors such as Vaclav Havel.
Havel, who died in December, became the first President of the Czech Republic.
In 1990, he presented Skvorecky with the Order of the White Lion - the country's highest honour.
It was just one of many lifetime awards awarded to the prolific writer, famed for his improvisational prose style.
Skvorecky's work explored recurring themes of the dangers of totalitarianism and repression of the masses.
In 1982, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize and two years later was presented with the Canadian Governor General's Award for English Language Fiction.
In 1996, he was made a knight of the order of arts and letters - one of the highest honours in France - and he was named the recipient of the Czech Republic State Prize for Literature in 1999.
He also taught literature at the University of Toronto until retiring in 1990.
bbc.com
