Square in Israel´s Haifa is called after former president Havel July 1, 2015 Source: Ceske noviny / By CTK / Tel Aviv / Prague – A square in Haifa, Israel, was named after former Czech president Vaclav Havel in the presence of Czech Culture Minister Daniel Herman today, the ministry´s spokeswoman Simona Cigankova has told CTK. Streets and buildings have also been called …
Prague’s Philosopher-King June 30, 2015 Source: City Journal / By Daniel J. Mahoney / A new biography chronicles the remarkable life and thought of Vaclav Havel. Michael Zantovsky has written a remarkable book about a complex and genuinely admirable human being. Zantovsky, a long-time friend and sometime press secretary to Václav Havel, went on to …
Yangon film festival pays tribute to Czech visionary Vaclav Havel June 26, 2015 Source: Asian Correspondent / By Michele Penna / Last week, pictures of a young – and eventually old – man were hanging at the Pasondan Art Gallery, in downtown Yangon. The black and white images portrayed him as he talked with friends, in a library, in prison and eventually as …
A tip for Europe’s frustrated young radicals: reclaim the dissident spirit June 13, 2015 Source: The Guardian / By Natalie Nougayrède / The Czech Velvet Revolution, with Václav Havel at its helm, was brave and principled. Syriza and Podemos should study it. “Live within the truth”: it may sound slightly lofty now, but that was the core, and very powerful, message of Communist bloc dissidents …
Vendela Vida: ‘The sense of smell is underused in fiction these days’ June 8, 2015 Source: The Globe and Mail / www.theglobeandmail.com / Vendela Vida is the author of several books, including the novels Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers. Vida, who lives in California, is also a founding editor of The Believer magazine. Her latest novel, The Diver’s Clothes Lie …
REVIEW: Memorandum by Vaclav Havel, Lancaster Library May 27, 2015 Source: Lancaster Guardian / www.lancasterguardian.co.uk / ‘Memorandum’, a black comedy by Czech philosopher, politician and playwright Václav Havel, was written and first staged in Communist Prague. It is very much in the tradition of the Theatre of the Absurd, alongside the works of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, John Osborne and …
Havel´s essay influences Egyptian political activists -translator May 16, 2015 Source: ČTK / www.ctk.cz / Late Czech president Vaclav Havel´s political essay The Power of the Powerless has markedly influenced political activists in Egypt, Egyptian expert in Czech studies Khalid Biltagi, who translated this work by Havel, told CTK today. Biltagi took part in a discussion about Havel, organised by The Vaclav …
The Moral Revolution in East-Central Europe May 14, 2015 Source: The World Post / By John Feffer / Some of the most powerful critiques of the Communist governments in East-Central Europe were moral. Vaclav Havel, for instance, argued that the regimes, with their propaganda and inequalities and corruption, were built on a foundation of lies. He proposed the alternative of …
Vaclav Havel: author of his country May 4, 2015 Source: The Australian / By Nicolas Rothwell / A dramatist whose life’s course surpassed the wildest theatric plotlines, a dissident condemned by fate to lead his country, a political prisoner turned leader of a peaceful revolution, a romantic and a private, self-doubting man — Vaclav Havel, first president of post-communist …
Vaclav Havel: What He Inspired April 23, 2015 Source: The New York Review of Books / By Paul Wilson / Few people have been better positioned to write about Vaclav Havel than Michael Zantovsky. He had known Havel since the mid-1980s, and was his press secretary, spokesman and adviser for 2 1/2 years, from early 1990 to mid-1992. During …
Is India’s Aam Admi Party no place for intellectuals? April 23, 2015 Source: BBC / By Soutik Biswas, Delhi correspondent / Vaclav Havel, the Czech Republic’s first president after the Velvet Revolution against communist rule, once said that politics needs more intellectuals. “I hear objections,” Havel, a former dissident playwright wrote. “Politicians must be elected; people vote for those who think the way they …
Pakistan’s political leaders as heroes April 14, 2015 Source: The Express Tribune / By Shahid Javed Burki / I will begin this discourse on political leaders as heroes with some admittedly debatable observations. After years of following Pakistan’s halting development as a nation, as a political system, and as an economic entity, I have come to believe that …
Havel’s Specter: On Václav Havel April 9, 2012 Source: The Nation / By Caleb Crain / The Czech playwright’s enduring ideas about politics, truth and human nature. “A specter is haunting Eastern Europe,” the Czech playwright Václav Havel wrote in 1978, “the specter of what in the West is called ‘dissent.’” In echoing the opening salvo of the Communist …
Democracy and the Human Heart February 16, 2012 Source: The New Republic / By Paul Berman / The Village Voice gives out theater awards called the Obies (for Off-Broadway), and during the 1980s the Voice’s theater department voted to bestow one of those prizes on the distinguished absurdist Václav Havel, who dwelled in the faraway absurdistan known as the Czechoslovak …
Havel: A Life by Michael Žantovský review – ‘an imperfect man, like the rest of us’ June 22, 2015 Source: The Guardin / By PD Smith / An honest and moving portrait that reveals the man’s faults as well as his undoubted greatness. Even as a teenager, Václav Havel thought it vital to be true to yourself: “to open the eyes to one’s own heart”, as he wrote in a letter. …