Josef Urban is a graduate of Charles University's Faculty of Science, where he studied engineering geology and hydrogeology. Prior to his writing career, he was a member of the national white-water kayak team.
After completing the "Czech Rafting" project, which mapped the deepest canyons on earth, Urban began writing. His travelogue, "The Deepest Valley of the World", was published in 1998. The same year, his first authorial film, "The Testament", was released, winning a main award at the IFF of Mountaineering Films in Teplice.
The film tells the story of Urban's first solo trip down the Nepalese wild river Buri Gandaki. His novel "Habermann's Mill" became a bestseller in 2000, and its screenwriting version won the Orfeus Film Award at the Czech Lion Award.
Urban collaborated with Dan Krzywon on a documentary drama about the 80th anniversary of the Munich Agreement, and the film "Where the Stones Roll" was dedicated to the "Lestina massacre" in 1945.
In 2007, a feature-length film based on Urban's novel and screenplay "At One's Own Risk" was released, directed by Filip Renc. Three years later, "Habermann's Mill" arrived in cinemas, directed by Juraj Herz. Urban also explored his Sudeten theme with another feature-length project, "7 Days of Sins", directed by Jiri Chlumsky, which won several foreign awards.
The Albatros published Urban's novel "Once upon a Time in Paradise" in 2015, concerning the fate of legendary climber Joska Smitko, who was executed by the Nazis in the last days of the war. A feature film was also released that year.
In 2018, Urban published "The Dog Thief", a collection of short stories about the strength of a dog-man relationship, illustrated by Marko Cermak. He began working on his latest novel, "Return to Valbone", in 2016, when he first ventured to Albania, tracing the mountain range Prokletije where three Czech students went missing in 2001.
