Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
events of 1968 when he was in Liberec and the path to Charter 77 and beyond (though not
including his reactions to being thrust into the role of president).
Václav Havel et al.
Power of the Powerless
. A collection of essays by leading Chartists,
kicking off with Havel's seminal title-piece. Other contributors range from the dissident
Marxist Petr Uhl to devout Catholics such as Václav Benda.
Miroslav Holub
The Dimension of the Present Moment and other Essays; Shedding Life:
Disease, Politics and Other Human Conditions
. Two books of short philosophical musings/
essays on life and the universe by this unusual and clever scientist-poet.
John Keane
Václav Havel:
A Political Tragedy in Six Acts. The first book to tell both sides
of the Havel story: Havel the dissident playwright and civil rights activist who played a key
role in the 1989 Velvet Revolution, and Havel the ageing and increasingly ill president, who,
in many people's opinion, stayed on the stage too long.
Benjamin Kuras
Czechs and Balances
and
Is There Life After Marx?
Witty, light, typically
Czech takes on national identity and central European politics.
As Golems Go
is a more mys-
tical look at Rabbi Löw's philosophy and the Kabbalah.
HedaMargoliusKovaly
Prague Farewell
.Anautobiographythatstartsintheconcentra-
tion camps of World War II and ends with the author's flight from Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Married to Rudolf Margolius, one of the Party officials executed in the 1952 Slánský trial,
she tells her story simply and without bitterness. The best account there is of the fear and
paranoia whipped up during the Stalinist terror. Published as
Under a Cruel Star
in the US.
Ivan Margolius
Reflections of Prague: Journeys Through the 20th Century
. A moving ac-
count of the lives of his parents,
Heda and Rudolf Margolius
, and the story of his return to
Prague to find out the truth about his father.
Nicholas Murray
Kafka
. A superbly researched and very level-headed assessment of the
German-Czech writer, who spent almost all of his short life in Prague.
Ota Pavel
How I Came to Know Fish
. Pavel's childhood innocence shines through particu-
larlywhenhisJewishfatherandtwobrothersaresenttoaconcentrationcampandheandhis
mother have to scrape a living.
Pressburger and Lappin
The Diary of Petr Ginz: 1941-1942
. Discovered in 2003, this is
the diary of a 15-year-old boy who was taken first to Terezín and then to Auschwitz, where
he died. He was exceptionally gifted, compiling a Czech-Esperanto dictionary among other
things, and his writing offers parallels with Anne Frank's.
Angelo Maria Ripellino
Magic Prague
. A wide-ranging look at the bizarre array of his-
torical and literary characters who have lived in Prague, from the mad antics of the court of
Rudolf II to the escapades of Jaroslav Hašek. Scholarly, rambling, richly and densely written
- and unique.
