Jan Balabán (1961–2010) was a Czech novelist, short-story writer, and translator. Among his most acclaimed works are the story collection Maybe We’re Leaving and the novel Ask Your Dad, which was published in Czech shortly after his death and awarded the Czech Republic’s Book of the Year Prize in 2010. Balabán died in 2010 at the age of forty-nine, leaving behind a body of work that established him as one of the leading Central European writers of his generation.