A discussion on the work of Ludvík Vaculík in the Free Word Centre
A Czech Dreambook: Dissent as an Everyday Experience
It’s 1979 in Communist Czechoslovakia and the banned writer Ludvík Vaculík – whose anti-regime manifesto was used by the Soviet Union as a pretext for invading Czechoslovakia – has writer’s block. He begins to keep a diary ‘about things, people and events.’ The result is A Czech Dreambook, a unique mixture of diary, dream journal and outright fiction.
Gerald Turner, Vaculík’s translator, Daňa Horáková, former dissident writer, and Jonathan Bolton, author of Worlds of Dissent, discussed Vaculík’s compelling portrait of dissident life, literary testimony in times of oppression, and the role of women in dissent. Award-winning editor of Index on Censorship magazine Rachael Jolley moderated the conversation.
photographer: Vladimír Šigut a Free Word Centre
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