Tomáš Zmeškal (b.1966 in Prague) studied English language and literature, and he lived and studied in London for a number of years. In the 1980s, he played for a while in the band Psí vojáci, led by writer and musician Filip Topol. He works as a writer, translator and a secondary-school teacher of English literature.
Although he had earlier published short stories, he came to wider attention mainly through his first novel, Milostný dopis klínovým písmem (Love Letter in Cuneiform Script, 2008), which describes the post-war world of 1950s Czechoslovakia from a postmodern, fragmented perspective. For this novel, he was shortlisted for the Magnesia Litera Prize and was awarded the Josef Škvorecký Award.