Voted Man of the Year (1999) and recipient of the Kossuth Prize (1997), the Peace Prize of the German Book Publishers (2004), and the Manes Sperber Literary Prize (2009), among others, he is easily one of the most popular writers in Europe today. A novelist, essayist, and playwright, he has published thirty-two books and plays to date. He is best known in England and the US for The Book of Hrabal (1994), She Loves Me (1997), and his magnum opus, Celestial Harmonies (2004). He is notorious for his clever use of language, as a result of which he likes to think of himself as untranslatable, as well as his intricate multiplicity of themes and meanings, which he presents with such seeming ease, that they can easily go unnoticed by the unaware reader. He is also known for taking intertextuality to new heights and for using quotes to “shatter” the complacency of his text. Coming from a family of renowned aristocrats, his connection to German culture is evident in most of his works.