Selected Prose of Vaclav Havel

Open Letters
Selected Prose of Vaclav Havel

ISBN: 9780571165216
Paperback 432 Pages
Price :£14.99 Sp.Price :£10.50

This selection of Havel's 25 best essays written since 1965 is a fascinating chronicle of the development and ideas of the greatly admired Czechoslovakian dissident turned president. Whether he muses on Gorbachev, his harassment by the police, or the ever-present danger of injustices being committed in service of noble words, Havel writes with clarity, wit, eloquence, a steadfast optimism, and remarkable courage. Although some of the pieces were already published in Vaclav Havel, or Living in Truth ( LJ 8/87), such as the influential essays on the nature of totalitarianism ("Power of the Powerless") and on the global crises of human responsibility ("Politics and Conscience"), this is an important book.
In a prescient 1987 essay, Czech playwright Havel, mocks those who look to "Glasnost Czar" Gorbachev as a liberator. Many of the pieces in this stirring collection of political essays, letters, speeches, autobiographical sketches, interviews and musings prefigure the upsurge of suppressed longings for freedom that toppled Czechoslovokia's totalitarian regime. A recurring theme is that fundamental change, whether in the East or the West, must begin with the individual conscience, with people resisting bureaucracy, ideologies and sloganeering.The book closes with Havel's ringing 1990 New Year's address envisioning a democratic, prosperous republic that has overcome an obsolete economy, bankrupt school system and polluted environment.