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Ivan M. Havel et al.: Letters from Olga

December 2, 2010

IllustrationLetters to Olga, written by Václav Havel from prison, is a world-famous work of Czech literature. Now Letters from Olga - the real answers to his philosophical letters - come to light.

However, the main author of the replies to the prisoner was his brother, Ivan M. Havel. Despite the censorship, he included also other persons in the correspondence, especially philosopher Zdeněk Neubauer, the main commenter on Havel's reflections about the ethics of responsibility and the "absolute horizon". Knowingly or unknowingly, also Radim Palouš, Petr Hájek, Anna Šabatová, Jiří Dienstbier, Martin Heidegger, Emanuel Lévinas, Raymond Ruyer, Vladimír Holan and others participated in responding to Letters to Olga.

You can buy the book at the discounted price of CZK 319 (plus postal charges).

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A Word about Words – samizdat essay

„Besides, to be wary of words and of the horrors that might slumber inconspicuously within them – isn’t this, after all, the true vocation of the intellectual? I recall that André Glucksmann once spoke in Prague about the need for intellectuals to emulate Cassandra: to listen carefully to the words of the powerful, to be watchful of them, to forewarn them of their danger, and to proclaim their dire implications or the evil they might invoke.“

Václav Havel:
A Word about Words – samizdat essay, July 25, 1989

Čechoslováci v gulaguCuba´s Black Spring