While former Czech President Václav Havel’s work as a politician and humanitarian are of paramount importance, his reputation as a writer must not be overlooked.

Czech poet, critic, dissident and diplomat Jiří Gruša has died in Germany, where he lived, while undergoing a heart operation. The Prague Post last talked to Gruša in 2009. A transcript of the interview is included below. Gruša was born in Pardubice and later moved to Prague, where he moved in dissident in literary circles. [...]

Prague Palimpsest is filled with ghostly juxtapositions of memory and place. For its author, Alfred Thomas, Prague is a surface upon which those who pass through have left their trace “without completely effacing the presence of their predecessors.” These may as often be politicians as writers, and the book’s compactly-written chapters do a good job of setting the literature of the city firmly in its historical and political context.

Czech writer Michal Ajvaz recently visited Korea for a series of readings and talks at Hankuk University. Ivana Bozděchová, Professor at the Department of Czech and Slovak Studies, HUFS/ Charles University Prague and now living in Korea, filed this report.

The Paris Review has released all of its author interviews free on its website. Stein’s radical decision to do so puts more than 50 years of interviews with leading novelists, poets and critics – an invaluable resource – at the disposal of online readers.

If you have read any contemporary Czech novels in English, you have probably read the words of American translator Alex Zucker. Zucker has translated more than a dozen books of contemporary Czech literature, most recently Case Closed by Patrik Ourednik. Zucker sat down with The Prague Post recently on his first return to Prague in several years.