The exhibition of documentary photographs by Eugen Kukla.

Debate with Respekt editor Tomáš Sacher on the subject The Czech Dream: Political Stability. How Long Will the New Government Last? And How United Are the Czech Left and the Czech Right?

Guests:

Helena Langšádlová, deputy chairwoman of TOP 09 and of the Chamber of Deputies European Affairs Committee, and Jaroslav Zavadil, leader of the Social Democrats in Prague and chairman of the Chamber of Deputies Social Policy Committee

Oldřich Kaiser will read from a new posthumous collection of poems by Ivan M. Jirous entitled Magorův noční zpěv (Magor’s Night Singing) and will sing and perform with Dáša Vokatá.

Presentation of a collection of work by a leading contemporary Romany author. The evening will be hosted by editors Karolína Ryvolová and Helena Sadílková, who will also lead a discussion with the writer.

The group Le čhavendar from Rokycany will perform.

There will be a tasting of the speciality goja.

Recent developments in Ukraine and the position of Czech foreign policy will be discussed at the Václav Havel Library by Jan Macháček and his guests. Among those invited are Libor Dvořák, Ondřej Soukup, Alexej Sevruk, Kateřina Šafaříková, Jiří Schneider, Lenka Víchová.

Columnist and cultural studies expert Jan Lukavec will present his new book Od českého Tokia k exotické Praze (From Czech Tokyo to Exotic Prague) about Czechs’ travels in search of the exotic and the incursion of the exotic into Bohemia.

Historian František Šístek will be guest.

And dancer Anja Řezníčková will perform.

A complete and comprehensive report on events at that time and other related issues and phenomena of Czech society in 2013 and beyond is contained in the novella Návrat vrabců (Return of the Sparrows) from Jaroslav Formánek’s forthcoming short story collection Hrad (Castle).

Musician Vlastimil Třešňák will be guest.

Opening of an exhibition of work by Jan Šafránek. Richard Drury will provide an introduction.

The second in a second season of lectures dedicated to the Czech underground. The Czech Underground series is organised by the Historical Sociology department at Charles University’s Faculty of Humanities and the Václav Havel Library and headed by sociologist Nicolas Maslowski.

Readings by authors from several of the seven categories in the annual Magnesia Litera book awards. Three or four writers from a range of categories will read. Pavel Mandys from the Litera civic association, which runs the awards, will host the evening.

Literary evening featuring poets from the Šumava area. The writers are headed by hymnic poet Roman Szpuzuk from the group XXVI and František Klišík, a descendant of Romanian immigrants who comes from the wilderness of Stögrova huť near Volary. From Prachatice come Libor Staněk and Radek Štěpánek, who produce their works on the Croatian island of Pag. Also featured will be Jakub Marvan and his Projekt A Nomos, while poet Lukáš Bína from Pardubice will, among other things, present his debut Ocelová Středozem (Steel Mediterranean).

The second evening in a series of staged readings of Václav Havel’s plays looks at A Butterfly on the Antenna, a one-act work on the passivity of the Czech intelligentsia. Writer Jeník celebrates his 30th birthday while water unceasingly drips from a tap, constantly gathering speed.

Featuring: Marie Málková, Ondřej Novák, Diana Toniková and others

Director: Šimon Dominik

The evening has been prepared by Barbora Šenoltová

Frynta’s articles, essays and studies of Czech, Russian and Spanish literature and literary and visual art in the period 1946–1974 will be presented by the collection’s editor, Jiří Honzík of the Torst publishing house, while Ada Fryntová and Daniel Frynta and Frnynta’s best friends Ivan Vyskočil and Jiří Suchý will speak about the writer’s unique personality.

Jan Šulc will present and discuss Frynta’s inner universe.

Readings by authors from several of the seven categories in the annual Magnesia Litera book awards. Three or four writers from a range of categories will read. Pavel Mandys from the Litera civic association, which runs the awards, will host the evening.

A Revolver Revue evening dedicated to U nás ve sklepě (In Our Cellar), an anthology of poetry of the second generation of the underground recently published in the Edice RR series. Literary critic and editor Marek Vajchr will deliver a paper on the poems in the book, while actors Ivana Uhlířová and Miloslav König will read selected poems from Vít Brukner, Tony Ducháček, Vít Kremlička, J. H. Krchovský, Karel Malík, Luděk Marks, Ewald Murrer, Petr Placák, Martin Socha, Filip Topol, Jáchym Topol a Anna Wágnerová (the staged reading is conceived along the lines of the Masopust theatre). The evening, hosted by Revolver Revue editor-in-chief Terezie Pokorná, will be concluded by literary historian Michael Špirit with the lecture The Nose That Disappeared: Poets of the Second Generation of the Underground in Academic History.

A variation on the still topical Faust story from the mid 1980s, in which Václav Havel captures the battle for one’s own identity with nonsensical mechanisms of power and in particular with the devil within us all. The evening will focus on the interesting circumstances of its genesis, the author’s own reflections and recollections, excerpts from a number of professional stagings and Ivan M. Havel in a production for video from the period when the play was banned at Czechoslovak theatres.

Launch of the second edition of a collection of poetry by Básník Ticho entitled Malá kniha Noci (Small Book of Night) (Skoba, 2014). The anthology, which presents a selection of the writer’s work from the period 1978–2012 is inspired in terms of content by the trinity of silence (concord and discontentment with the universe, internal and external harmony and disharmony, the landscape of silence). As well as the poet’s legendary magical imagination, it presents poems that are purely detective style, literary hip-hop, cyber pop, silent-soft, sci-fi, retro ballads, heretical or analytical, or his typical haiku.

The collection will be official launched by Ota Kars, Aleš Klíma and Vít Kremlička, who will also participate in the programme.

The third in a second season of lectures dedicated to the Czech underground. The Czech Underground series is organised by the Historical Sociology department at Charles University’s Faculty of Humanities and the Václav Havel Library and headed by sociologist Nicolas Maslowski.

Readings by authors from several of the seven categories in the annual Magnesia Litera book awards. Three or four writers from a range of categories will read. Pavel Mandys from the Litera civic association, which runs the awards, will host the evening.

Translator Olga Lomová presents one of the key works of the Chinese tradition, Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian, a historical chronicle from the first century AD. The subsequent debate will take in translating from classical Chinese, Chinese traditional culture and the interpretation of tradition in contemporary China.