68 Publishers: Skvorecky

Toronto Hospital Dept: He died Tuesday in a Toronto hospital after battling cancer, according to CBC. Skvorecky was an influential publisher of banned books through his company 68 Publishers, which he formed in Toronto in 1971 after fleeing the Soviet invasion that crushed the 1968 reform movement dubbed the Prague Spring and josef Skvorecky, a Czech dissident writer who spent most of his life in exile in Canada, has died. He was 87. Skvorecky won the Governor General s Literary Award in 1984 for The Engineer of Human Souls , a comic novel about the plight of a Czech dissident writer who is trying to make a new life in Canada. His other works, all translated into English, include The Republic of Whores, The Bride of Texas, Dvorak in Love and The Swell Season . (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.