In 1990, Josef Škvorecký received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, one of several major honours that came to mark a writing life conducted across two languages and two continents.

Born on 27 September 1924 in Náchod, Škvorecký was educated at Charles University and later at the University of California, Berkeley. He worked as a writer, prose writer, poet, literary critic, translator, philologist, linguist, and publisher, and served on editing staff — a range of roles that reflected the breadth of his engagement with literary culture. He wrote in both Czech and English, and held citizenship in both the Czech Republic and Canada. His notable work included the novel The Cowards. After settling in Toronto, he became a Member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and the city where he spent much of his later life awarded him the Toronto Book Awards. He was also made an honorary citizen of Prague, a recognition that connected him to the country of his birth even from abroad.

The awards accumulated steadily across his career. He received the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Jaroslav Seifert Prize, the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from France, the Order of the White Lion 3rd Class, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an honorary doctorate from Masaryk University, and the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence. Each of these honours came from a different corner of the literary and civic world, reflecting the range of his work across genres and national traditions.

Škvorecký died in Toronto on 3 January 2012. His receipt of the Order of the White Lion 3rd Class, one of the Czech Republic's highest state decorations, stands as a concrete marker of the regard in which he was held in the country he had left behind.