Virtually everything Vaclav Havel has ever written has acquired a new resonance, whether ironic, artistic, philosophical or political, since he became President of his country in 1989. This selection of his prose ranges in time from the early 1960s to his New Year message of 1990.
Author Biography
Vaclav Havel was born in Czechoslovakia in 1936. He is a founding spokesman of Charter 77 and the author of many influential essays on the nature of totalitarianism and dissent. In 1979 he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for his involvement in the human rights movement. In November 1989 he helped to found the Civic Forum, the first legal opposition movement in Czechoslovakia in forty years; and in December 1989 he was elected President of Czechoslovakia.
