Education
Born in Prague to a secular German-speaking Jewish family, Osers studied chemistry in Prague and in London where he stayed after the Munich Agreement in 1938.
Born in Prague to a secular German-speaking Jewish family, Osers studied chemistry in Prague and in London where he stayed after the Munich Agreement in 1938.
He was one of the most outstanding translators of Central European literature into English. He worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation World Service until his retirement in 1977. He began translating Czechoslovakian and German poetry in 1937 and went on to publish more than 150 books of literature in translation and several volumes of his own poetry and memoirs.
He translated several important Czechoslovakian poetry works of the 20th century into English, including Czechoslovakian poetry, including Jaroslav Seifert, Vítězslav Nezval, Miroslav Holub and January Skácel.
He also translated several German-language authors such as Thomas Bernhard, as well as Macedonian-language books (Mateja Matevski), poetry of the Silesian poet Ondra Lysohorsky, and two major Slovak poets, Miroslav Válek and Milan Rúfus.