Ivan Klima, the Czech novelist whose survival of two totalitarian regimes — one Nazi, the other communist — made him one of Eastern Europe’s most perceptive distillers of the human condition under authoritarianism, died on Saturday. He was 94.
His son, Michal, announced the death on the social media site X but did not provide further details.
A writer of more than 40 books, as well as a dissident, teacher and critic, Mr. Klima was deeply affected by an early experience in his life: incarceration as a boy by the Nazis at Terezin concentration camp north of Prague. While living there from 1941-45, he faced the daily prospect of being transported to Auschwitz. Some of his most memorable short stories and novels, including “Judge on Trial,” touched on the horror of those years.
But his writing dwelled most heavily on the communist era, including the aftermath of the Prague Spring in 1968, a period of relative freedom when he and other intellectuals supported the reformist efforts of the leader Alexander Dubcek, who hoped to create a “Socialism with a human face” in Czechoslovakia. Their optimism was thwarted when the Soviets sent an estimated 750,000 Warsaw Pact troops to suppress the Prague reforms later that year.
Unlike dissident writers who left the country or were pushed out — among them Milan Kundera, Josef Skvorecky and Pavel Kohout — Mr. Klima returned to Prague in 1970 from an authorized sabbatical in the United States. He became an important publisher of underground texts, smuggling some out of the country to Western publishers. He also defied the government by organizing an influential (and wine-fueled) clandestine literary salon, attended by other dissident writers, including the Czech playwright and future president Vaclav Havel.
“Ivan Klima is one of the greatest Czech writers and, having experienced concentration camps and the communist period, is a walking symbol of what our country endured in this century,” said Jiri Pehe, director of New York University in Prague. “He was more than a literary figure, he played a crucial role in publishing banned works and challenging the communist regime.”
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The post Ivan Klima, Czech Novelist Who Chafed Under Totalitarian Regimes, Dies at 94 appeared first on New York Times.
