From Publishers Weekly
This collection of critical pieces by the acclaimed Czech author of Waiting for the Darkness, Waiting for the Light offers a fine introduction to Klima's life, intellectual development and literary and cultural preoccupations. It includes essays on the author's boyhood, partly spent in the Nazi concentration camp Terezin; on his beginnings as a writer; and an interview with Philip Roth in which Klima expresses his views on Vaclav Havel and Milan Kundera, among other people and topics. There is also an essay on the creation of Prague's samizdat press and some rather cranky feuilletons, short pieces written for same. But the longer the essays, the more powerful. Klima's description of the genesis of organized opposition to the Czech Communist government after 1968 and his long closing work, delineating the role that certain painful personal experiences played in Kafka's writing, especially of The Castle and In the Penal Colony, are particularly important. While exposing readers to Klima, this well-constructed collection will also help acquaint them with contemporary Czech letters, and with the circumstances surrounding the non-violent "velvet" revolution of 1989, one of recent history's most inspired episodes of intellectual activism and courage. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
In an interview with Philip Roth that is the best piece in this intriguing but somewhat mixed bag of essays, Klima comments of famed Czech emigre Kundera, "The hardness of life has a much more complicated shape than we find in his presentation of it." The contrast couldn't be greater with Klima's own writings (e.g., Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light, LJ 2/15/95), which with sympathy and deep humanity work through the painful moral dilemmas and daily little compromises people make under totalitarian rule. In two modestly titled pieces that open the book, "A Rather Unconventional Childhood" and "How I Began," Klima discusses a youth spent in a Nazi concentration camp (he is Jewish) and then under Communist rule and shows how this shaped his writing impulse. These pieces are Klima at his best?subtle, effectively detailed, capable of standing to the side of events and extracting their essence. Other pieces here, many given as addresses at various symposia, are too brief to be involving. Nevertheless, this collection offers valuable insight into Klima's work, which should be read by anyone interested in good literature or world events. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
This collection confirms Klima's literary concern with the deluge of printed and visual vapidity in modern culture, a theme in his novel Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light. Yes, many pieces tackle totalitarian topics with which he is associated as a top Czech dissident writer whom the world noticed and celebrated after the "velvet" revolution in 1989; but more than communism worries him. Many of these short pieces, most collected from samizdat and German newspapers, strive to disabuse readers of the "erroneous and optimistic conclusion that these [totalitarian] regimes were somehow alien to the very essence of human behavior and thinking" ; flaccid, uncritical thinking is a necessary predicate against which writers must guard, in his view. Thus one essay examines failures of literary vigilance by socialist novelists, and the longest article analyzes Prague's most famous and prescient writer, Franz Kafka. Add his articulate insights about his childhood in a Nazi concentration camp, and Klima's readers get a rounded view of their author's succinct approach to the potential and pitfalls of literature. Gilbert Taylor


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Czech

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Here, in Klima's own powerful words, is the motivation behind his writing - the necessity to bear witness to his country's turbulent history. In the title essay of this collection of essays, Klima invokes the spirit of the city that has shaped and sustained him: ironical, cultural, accustomed to adversity but full of hope. A city which has spawned and inspired Milan Kundera, Josef Skvorecky and Pavel Kohut. Other essays deal with his childhood experience in a concentration camp, thoughts about literature and memory, and the nature and importance of honesty and hope. A penetrating interview by Philip Roth and a study of Franz Kafka, compassionate and illuminating, are also included.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

This collection of critical pieces by the acclaimed Czech author of Waiting for the Darkness, Waiting for the Light offers a fine introduction to Klma's life, intellectual development and literary and cultural preoccupations. It includes essays on the author's boyhood, partly spent in the Nazi concentration camp Terezin; on his beginnings as a writer; and an interview with Philip Roth in which Klma expresses his views on Vaclav Havel and Milan Kundera, among other people and topics. There is also an essay on the creation of Prague's samizdat press and some rather cranky feuilletons, short pieces written for same. But the longer the essays, the more powerful. Klma's description of the genesis of organized opposition to the Czech Communist government after 1968 and his long closing work, delineating the role that certain painful personal experiences played in Kafka's writing, especially of The Castle and In the Penal Colony, are particularly important. While exposing readers to Klma, this well-constructed collection will also help acquaint them with contemporary Czech letters, and with the circumstances surrounding the non-violent ``velvet'' revolution of 1989, one of recent history's most inspired episodes of intellectual activism and courage. (Sept.)

Library Journal