Product details
- ISBN 9788024663722
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 150 x 190mm
- Publication Date: 04 Nov 2026
- Publisher: Karolinum,Nakladatelstvi Univerzity Karlovy,Czech Republic
- Publication City/Country: CZ
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
An English translation of a lost manuscript of reflections from former Czech dissident Václav Havel.
In the fall of 1977, after the dramatic events of the “Year of Charter 77,” Václav Havel wrote a report recounting the first hours after the Charter 77 Declaration, the four months of investigative detention imposed on him by the communist regime, his release, and the agonizing self-examination that followed. In this text, the former dissident describes not only the investigation but also the Faustian guilt he felt after promising to scale back his political activities in exchange for his freedom. As he later recalled in a book-length interview with journalist Karel Hvíždala titled Dálkový výslech (Long-distance interrogation), he hid the roughly one-hundred-page manuscript somewhere, admitting: “I don’t know where it is anymore. Maybe I’ll find it someday.” He never did. The manuscript resurfaced only recently, discovered among the papers of his close friend Zdenek Urbánek. Fragmentary yet strikingly immediate, the text has been reconstructed and published by the Václav Havel Library, with the English translation appearing on the occasion of the world-renowned intellectual’s ninetieth birthday.
Václav Havel (1936–2011) was a Czech playwright, essayist, and dissident, widely regarded as a leading thinker of the twentieth century, who served as the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic. Paul Wilson is a translator and editor specializing in Czech literature, known for his English translations of Václav Havel’s works, including Open Letters: Selected Writing 1963–1989, Summer Meditations, The Art of the Impossible, and The Beggar’s Opera.
