Overview

In his intimate autobiography, spanning six decades that included war, totalitarianism, censorship, and the fight for democracy, acclaimed Czech writer Ivan Klíma reflects back on his remarkable life and this critical period of twentieth-century history. Klíma's story begins in the 1930s on the outskirts of Prague where he grew up unaware of his concealed Jewish heritage. It came as a surprise when his family was transported to the Terezín concentration camp--and an even greater surprise when most of them survived. They returned home to a city in economic turmoil and falling into the grip of Communism. Against this tumultuous backdrop, Klíma discovered his love of literature and matured as a writer. But as the regime further encroached on daily life, arresting his father and censoring his work, Klíma recognized the party for what it was: a deplorable, colossal lie. The true nature of oppression became clear to him and many of his peers, among them Josef Skvorecký, Milan Kundera, and Václav Havel. From the brief hope of freedom during the Prague Spring of 1968 to Charter 77 and the eventual collapse of the regime in 1989's Velvet Revolution, Klíma's revelatory account provides a profoundly rich personal and national history.

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9780802121707

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[An] absorbing memoir . . . The author relates all this with a mordant humor and a limpid prose that registers both the overt fear that repression engenders and the subtler moral corruptions it works in victims and perpetrators. . . . Klima's searching exploration of a warped era is rich in irony--and dogged hope. -- Publishers Weekly My Crazy Century is the prizewinning memoir of a writer who, deprived of freedom for much of this life, never ceased to be free in his imagination, creativity, and art. Neither Nazi nor Communist rulers could rob Ivan Klima of his amazing ability--and fierce determination--to distill drops of truth from the sea of experience. Klima was a witness, and participant, in the most dramatic events in twentieth century Europe. This is his story, brilliantly, wittily and poignantly told. --Madeleine Albright A candid, illuminating memoir of a man who retained his humanity in inhumane times, and used the light of reason to resist an absurdist regime. Klima's account of living in the shadow of censorship and in the spotlight of Cold War events gives us intimate insight into the vicissitudes of literature in 'the Other Europe, ' and the exceptional courage required of writers in repressive epochs to speak simple truths to capricious power. --Eva Hoffman Klima engagingly portrays the complex path of his own thinking and his and his family's fate. -- Czech Literature A very successful memoir, which could serve as a guidebook for the 20th century, especially for the younger generation. -- Respekt Klima traces an arc from 1967 to 1989, describing the developments of the Prague Spring, the August occupation, and twenty schizophrenic years of 'Normalization.' He of course pays attention not only to the so-called important events, but heads off into a very intimate sphere of personal experience. -- Literarni Noviny We find in this book an unaffected testimony of tragic and absurd experiences, o

Praise for My Crazy Century <br><br> A very successful memoir, which could serve as a guidebook for the 20th century, especially for the younger generation. -- Respekt <br><br> Klima traces an arc from 1967 to 1989, describing the developments of the Prague Spring, the August occupation, and twenty schizophrenic years of 'Normalization.' He of course pays attention not only to the so-called important events, but heads off into a very intimate sphere of personal experience. -- Literarni Noviny <br><br> We find in this book an unaffected testimony of tragic and absurd experiences, of injustice, wrongs, and first loves, of ever more successful artistic attempts, and later, of the fight against communist censors. -- iDnes <br><br>Praise for Ivan Klima<br><br> Rather than become embittered by his country's past, Klima has come to a truce with imperfection--the imperfection of history and of love. -- San Francisco Chronicle <br><br> A Czech genius. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review <br><br> Hope, guilt, the search for true close human contact--these are the themes to which Klima has been steadfast through a difficult lifetime. -- The New York Times

In My Crazy Century, the renowned Czech writer Ivan Klima masterfully recounts, first, what it was like for him as a Jewish child confronting with his family the inhumanities of the Theresienstadt concentration camp situated at the edge of their hometown, Prague. Then, more fully, he painstakingly recalls what it was like for him and his countrymen after the Nazi thugs were driven out by the Soviet Army and replaced for four decades by the Communist thugs. How Klima and his Czechoslovakian colleagues--among them some of the best writers in postwar Europe--endured the relentless infraction of their fundamental rights is chronicled here through the private history of one who steadily stood up to his oppressors and who has thought deeply about the degradation and deformation conferred on a decent society by the lawless thuggery of Europe's twentieth-century ideological monsters, one who preached racial purity and the annihilation of the Jews, the other working-class purity and the annihilation of the wealthy, the bourgeoisie, and anyone capable of independent thought. In its telling, forthright intimacy Klima's book merits a place alongside such eyewitness accounts of the evils of totalitarianism as Eugenia Ginzburg's Within the Whirlwind and Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. --Philip Roth From the Nazi concentration camps to the communist show trials, Klima shines a vibrant light on the machinery of oppression and the struggles of artists and intellectuals to subvert government control. . . . More than a memoir, the book is the intellectual history of a city and a memorial to its inhabitants, who, laboring underground, kept the idea of democracy alive after the Prague Spring. A fitting capstone to a distinguished literary life. -- Kirkus Reviews My Crazy Century is the prizewinning memoir of a writer who, deprived of freedom for much of this life, never ceased to be free in his imagination, creativity,

Praise for Ivan Klima<br><br> Klima has endured as a writer, endured as a human being, writing of the great themes of freedom, honesty and love and politics, and gazing with an unsparing eye on the lies of Communism and the moral miasma of post-Communist freedom. --BBC<br><br> Rather than become embittered by his country's past, Klima has come to a truce with imperfection--the imperfection of history and of love. -- San Francisco Chronicle <br><br> A Czech genius. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review <br><br> Hope, guilt, the search for true close human contact--these are the themes to which Klima has been steadfast through a difficult lifetime. -- The New York Times <br><br>Praise for My Crazy Century <br><br> Klima engagingly portrays the complex path of his own thinking and his and his family's fate. -- Czech Literature <br><br> A very successful memoir, which could serve as a guidebook for the 20th century, especially for the younger generation. -- Respekt <br><br> Klima traces an arc from 1967 to 1989, describing the developments of the Prague Spring, the August occupation, and twenty schizophrenic years of 'Normalization.' He of course pays attention not only to the so-called important events, but heads off into a very intimate sphere of personal experience. -- Literarni Noviny <br><br> We find in this book an unaffected testimony of tragic and absurd experiences, of injustice, wrongs, and first loves, of ever more successful artistic attempts, and later, of the fight against communist censors. -- iDnes

Author Information

Ivan Klima was born in Prague in 1931. He is the award-winning author of over 20 novels, including ""Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light,"" ""No Saints or Angels,"" ""The Ultimate Intimacy,"" and ""Lovers for a Day""--all ""New York Times"" Notable Books of the Year. Craig Cravens (translator) has taught Czech language and culture for over 10 years; he is currently a senior lecturer at Indiana State University. He has a PhD in Slavic languages and literature from Princeton University and a BA from Amherst College in Russian Literature.

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