Ivan Klíma (born Ivan Kauders, 14 September 1931) is a Czech novelist and playwright. He has received the

Magnesia Litera Magnesia Litera is an annual literary award, book award held in the Czech Republic since 2002. The prize covers all literary genres in eight genre categories: prose, poetry, children's literature, children's book (since 2004), non-fiction, essay/jo ...

award and the

Franz Kafka Prize The Franz Kafka Prize is an international literary award presented in honour of Franz Kafka, the Jewish, Bohemian, German-language novelist. The prize was first awarded in 2001 and is co-sponsored by the Franz Kafka Society and the city of Prag ...

, among other honors.Interview: Ivan Klíma
Stephan Delbos, ''The Prague Post'', 29 February 2012

Biography

Klíma's early childhood in Prague was happy and uneventful, but this all changed with the German invasion of

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

in 1938, after the

Munich Agreement The Munich Agreement was reached in Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Third Republic, French Republic, and the Kingdom of Italy. The agreement provided for the Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–194 ...

. He had been unaware that both his parents had Jewish ancestry; neither was an observant Jew, but this was immaterial to the Germans. In November 1941, first his father Vilém Klíma and then, in December, he and his mother and brother were ordered to leave for the concentration camp at Theriesenstadt ( Terezín), where he was to remain until its liberation by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

in May 1945. He and both his parents survived incarceration, even though Terezín, a holding camp for Jews from central and southern Europe, was regularly cleared of its overcrowded population by transports to "the East," that is, to death camps such as

Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...

. The family adopted the less German-sounding surname of Klíma after the war. Klíma has written graphically about this period in articles in the British literary magazine ''

Granta ''Granta'' is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centres on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story's supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make ...

'', particularly ''A Childhood in Terezin''.Ivan Klíma. ''A Childhood in Terezin''. ''Granta'' 44, 1993, pp 191–208 He has written that "anyone who has been through a concentration camp as a child, who has been completely dependent on an external power which can at any moment come in and beat or kill him and everyone around him, probably moves through life at least a bit differently from people who have been spared such an education. That life can be snapped like a piece of string - that was my daily lesson as a child." With the post-war rise of the Czech Communist regime and proxy

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

control, Klima became a member of the

Communist Party of Czechoslovakia The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia ( Czech and Slovak: ''Komunistická strana Československa'', KSČ) was a communist and Marxist–Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992. It was a member of the Com ...

. Eventually, his childhood hopes for the triumph of good over evil became an adult awareness that it was often "not the forces of good and evil that do battle with each other, but merely two different evils, in competition for the control of the world". The show trials and murders of those who opposed the new regime began, and Klíma's father was again imprisoned, this time by his own countrymen. During the

Prague Spring The Prague Spring (; ) was a period of liberalization, political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected Secretary (title), First Secre ...

of 1968 Klíma was a leading dissident. At the time of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, in August 1968, Klíma was in London, on his way to a teaching engagement in

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

. However, he returned to Prague in March 1970. Although he was then deprived of his passport and forced to work in menial jobs, he remained a member of the literary 'underground', smuggling books and getting involved in

samizdat Samizdat (, , ) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual rep ...

. After the overthrow of Communism in 1989 Klíma became a prominent supporter of Vaclav Havel.

Writing

Ivan Klíma was awarded the

in 2002. His two-volume memoir ''Moje šílené století'' (''My Crazy Century'') won the Magnesia Litera, a Czech literary prize, in the non-fiction category in 2010. ''My Crazy Century'' was published in English in 2013 by Grove Press.

Bibliography

*''A Ship Named Hope: Two Novels'' (1970) *''Milostné léto'' (1972) *''Ma veselá jitra'' (1985) (English: ''My Merry Mornings: Stories from Prague'' (1985)) *''Moje první lásky'' (1985) (English: ''My First Loves'' (1986)) *'' Love and Garbage (Láska a smetí)'' (1986; English Translation 1990) *''Soudce z milosti'' (1986) (English translation: Judge on Trial (1991)) *''A Summer Affair'' (1987) *''Milenci na jednu noc'' (1988) *''My First Loves'' (1988) *''Už se blíží meče: Eseje, Fejetony, Rozhovory'' (1990) *''Ministr a anděl'' (1990) *''Rozhovor v Praze'' (1990) *''Moje zlatá řemesla'' (1990) *''Hry: Hra o dvou dějstvích'' (1991) *''My Golden Trades'' (1992) *''Ostrov mrtvých králů (1992) *''ekání na tmu, čekání na světlo'' (1993) *''Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light'' (1994) *''The Spirit of Prague and Other Essays'' (1994) *''My Golden Trades'' (1994) *''Milostné rozhovory'' (1995) *''Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light'' (1995) *''Jak daleko je slunce'' (1995) *''Čekání na tmu, čekání na světlo'' (1996) *''Poslední stupeň důvěrnosti''Č (1996) *''The Ultimate Intimacy'' (1997) *''Loď jménem Naděje '' (1998) *''When I came home'' (1998) *''Kruh nepřátel českého jazyka: Fejetony'' (1998) *''O chlapci, který se nestal číslem'' (1998) *''Fictions and Histories'' (1998) *''Lovers for a Day'' (1999) *''No Saints or Angels (Ani svatí, ani andělé)'' (1999; English translation, 2001) *''Between Security and Insecurity'' (2000) *''Velký věk chce mít též velké mordy'' ("A Great Age needs Great Murders" - life and works of Karel Čapek) (2001) *''Karel Čapek: Life and Work'' (English translation of above) (2002) *''Premiér a anděl'' (2003) *''Moje šílené století'' (''My Crazy Century'') (2009; English translation, 2013)

References

External links

*
Spisovatel Ivan Klíma převzal Cenu Karla Čapka, tomu i poděkoval (Lidové noviny)

''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', 17 November 2013, * Maya Jaggi
Building bridges"
''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', 1 May 2004,
"Ivan Klíma: a sceptic in the era of entertainment culture"

Czech Radio Czech Radio (, ČRo) is the public radio broadcaster of the Czech Republic operating continuously since 1923. It is the oldest national radio broadcaster in continental Europe and the second-oldest in Europe after the BBC. Czech Radio was esta ...

, 8. 11. 2009, {{DEFAULTSORT:Klima, Ivan 1931 births Living people 20th-century Czech novelists 20th-century Czech dramatists and playwrights Czech male dramatists and playwrights Czech male novelists 20th-century Czech Jews 21st-century Czech Jews Jewish novelists Theresienstadt Ghetto survivors Writers from Prague Recipients of Medal of Merit (Czech Republic) University of Michigan faculty