Milada Blekastad

Milada Blekastad (born Milada Topičová; 1 July 1917 – 25 October 2003) was a Czech-Norwegian literary historian, translator and Bohemist. From the 1930s, she lived in Norway.

Personal life She was born Milada Topičová on 1 July 1917 in Prague.

She had seven children.

She died on 25 October 2003 in Oslo.

Career She was a lecturer in Czech at the University of Oslo from 1957. She took the dr.philos. degree in 1969 with the thesis Comenius, Versuch eines Umrisses von Leben, Werk und Schicksal des Jan Amos Komenský. She was a Government scholar from 1970.

She wrote several academic and popular works on Comenius. Books about him include Menneskenes sak (1977), and translations include Verdsens labyrint (1955; orig. 1631) and Informatoriet for skulen hennar mor (1965). She wrote historical overviews Millom aust og vest (1958) and Millom bork og ved (1978) as well as publishing the fairytale collection Tsjekkiske og Slovakiske eventyr in four volumes between 1939 and 1955.

She was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and of the Norwegian PEN Club. In 1997, she was awarded the Medal of Merit, First Grade, by the president of the Czech Republic Václav Havel.