Václav Havel was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December, before he became the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was the first democratically elected president of either country after the fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays and memoirs.
Charter 77 was an informal civic initiative in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Jiří Němec, Václav Benda, Ladislav Hejdánek, Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, Martin Palouš, Pavel Kohout, and Ladislav Lis. Spreading the text of the document was considered a political crime by the Czechoslovak government. After the 1989 Velvet Revolution, many of the members of the initiative played important roles in Czech and Slovak politics.
Ivan Klíma is a Czech novelist and playwright. He has received the Magnesia Litera award and the Franz Kafka Prize, among other honors.
Josef Škvorecký was a Czech-Canadian writer and publisher. He spent half of his life in Canada, publishing and supporting banned Czech literature during the communist era. Škvorecký was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1980. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country. Škvorecký's fiction deals with several themes: the horrors of totalitarianism and repression, the expatriate experience, and the miracle of jazz.
Jan Zábrana was a Czech writer and translator.
Ivan Martin Jirous was a Czech poet and dissident, best known as the artistic director of the Czech psychedelic rock group The Plastic People of the Universe, and later one of the key figures of the Czech underground during the communist regime. He is more frequently known as Magor, which can be roughly translated as "shithead", "loony", or "fool", a nickname given to him by the experimental poet Eugen Brikcius.
The Czechoslovak underground or Prague underground was a dissident underground culture that developed in Communist Czechoslovakia, centred on Prague, especially around the 1970s during the normalization period. The movement was characterized by resistance to the political conformity and cultural consumerism encouraged by the mainstream, and was the target of repression by the communist regime which considered it political opposition.
The Plastic People of the Universe (PPU) is a Czech rock band from Prague. They are considered the foremost representatives of Prague's underground culture (1968–1989), which defied Czechoslovakia's Communist regime. Members of the band often suffered serious repercussions, including arrests and prosecution, because of their non-conformist ideals. The group continues to perform, despite the death in 2001 of its founder, main composer, and bassist, Milan Hlavsa. Up to 2023, they had released nine studio albums and over a dozen live albums.
Alan Levy was an American author.
Ludvík Vaculík was a Czech writer and journalist. He was born in Brumov, Moravian Wallachia. A prominent samizdat writer, he was best known as the author of the "Two Thousand Words" manifesto of June 1968.
Milan "Mejla" Hlavsa was the founder, chief songwriter, and original bassist of the Czech band the Plastic People of the Universe, which was part of the inspiration for the anti-establishment movement Charter 77.
Mánička is a Czech term used for young people with long hair, typically men, in Czechoslovakia through the 1960s and 1970s. Long hair for males during this time was considered an expression of political and social attitudes in communist Czechoslovakia. The word a diminutive of the female given names Máňa or Marie.
Michael Žantovský is a Czech polymath. He is a former Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United Kingdom, as well as to Israel and the United States.
Tribute to Václav Havel was an event held in memory of Václav Havel, the last Czechoslovak and the first Czech President, writer, playwright and human rights activist. The concert took place in Lucerna Music Bar in Prague on 23 December 2011, five days after the death of Havel.
The Power of the Powerless is an expansive political essay written in October 1978 by the Czech dramatist, political dissident, and later statesman, Václav Havel.
Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned is an album by Czech underground band the Plastic People of the Universe. It was recorded in 1974/75, mainly at Houska Castle, enabled by the castle's then warden Svatopluk Karásek, with some songs being recorded in Prague. The album could not be officially released and distributed under the former Communist regime in Czechoslovakia; instead fans duplicated tapes with one another, often resulting in poor technical quality. After the band members' arrest and trial in 1976 Ivan Hartl, a Czech living in London, attempted to get the album released in the west. It was released in 1978 in France by SCOPA Invisible Production and in England by Boží Mlýn, a label founded by the former Plastic People member Paul Wilson. In the Czech Republic a remastered version was published in 2001 by Globus Music. The album title is a reference to the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Ivan Hartl supplied the pun on "banned/band". Most of the songs on the record are settings of poems by Egon Bondy.
Jan Novák is a Czech-American writer, screenwriter and playwright. He writes in both Czech and English, occasionally translating his work. He has received awards in both the United States and the Czech Republic. He has worked closely with such figures as Václav Havel and Miloš Forman.
The Miracle Game is a Czech novel by Josef Škvorecký published in 1972 by Sixty Eight Publishers in Toronto, Canada. It was translated into English in 1990 by Paul Wilson, and according to The Times is Skvorecky's masterpiece. It was his response to Prague Spring events of 1968 Czechoslovakia. and contains unflattering references to real people, Future Czech President Václav Havel becomes "the world-famous playwright Hejl", the writer Vladimír Páral appears as the "gifted non-party novelist Nabal".
Zorka Ságlová (1943–2003) was a Czech textile artist, painter, and performance artist.
Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz was a Canadian scholar and translator, best-known for her work on Czech literature. Born to a German Bohemian mother and a Czech-Jewish father, she won the 1988 Ordo Scriptores Bohemici prize, 2000 Medal of Merit, and 2016 George Theiner Prize.
