IVAN KLIMA (b. 1931) is a Czech novelist and playwright. He spent three boyhood years in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, and survived to chronicle Prague's two decades in the Soviet empire. He was banned from publishing a word in his homeland for 20 years. As a survivor of two totalitarian regimes, Klima has been preoccupied with dilemmas of personal morality under immoral systems. "When the law goes berserk," he has written, "all of us become felons." Since 1989 his fiction has probed a paradox whereby "inner freedom", preserved in the absence of external liberty, can be lost or compromised in a free society.
Klima's most overtly political work, JUDGE ON TRIAL (1986), written during repeated interrogations ("more humiliating than cruel") and house searches, portrayed a judge struggling with his shattered faith in the system. Among his other novels are LOVE AND GARBAGE (1988), the narrator of which is a banned Czech writer who sweeps streets for a living while meditating on Franz Kafka and other momentous matters; WAITING FOR THE DARK, WAITING FOR THE LIGHT (1993), set during the Velvet revolution and about a Czech cameraman floundering in the prosperity that follows oppression; and NO SAINTS OR ANGELS (1999), about cultural and personal havoc in contemporary Prague. Some of his short fiction is collected in LOVERS FOR A DAY (1964).
THE SPIRIT OF PRAGUE (1994) is a collection of essays charting five critical decades in the history of Czechoslovakia, including events such as: the Nazi occupation; the Stalinist regimes of the fifties; the celebrations of the Prague Spring; the 1968 Soviet invasion; Charter 77; and the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Klima's intimate autobiography, MY CRAZY CENTURY (2009), is a profoundly rich personal and national history spanning six decades that included war, totalitarianism, censorship, and the fight for democracy.
The following books are in PDF and/or ePUB format as indicated:
== FICTION ==
* Judge on Trial (Chatto & Windus, 1991). Translated by A. G. Brain. -- ePUB
* Love and Garbage (Vintage, 2002). Translated by Ewald Osers. -- ePUB
* Lovers for a Day (Grove, 1999). Translated by Gerald Turner. -- ePUB
* No Saints or Angels (Grove, 2001). Translated by Gerald Turner. -- PDF + ePUB
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