Dr. Skvorecky was awarded the C.M. (Member of the Order of Canada) on
April 30, 1992 for his services to Canadian Literature.
He left Czechoslovakia during the "Prague Spring" in 1968. Subsequently, he taught American literature at the University of Toronto, where he also wrote about life as an émigré, and of Western students with no sense of history.
His most enduring character was an alter ego, Danny Smiricky, a jazz-loving admirer of Mark Twain. Danny appears in about half of Skvorecky's novels. He struggles - not always heroically - to maintain decency amid the terrors and indignities of totalitarian society.
He was a prominent member of a generation of Czech writers who gained international attention for dissident literature written in the face of Communist censorship.