Prague (AP) -ivan Klim, Czech author and anti-communist dissident, whose work and life were formed by the totalitarian regimes of Europe of the 20th century.
His son Michal told the Czech čtk information agency that Klima died on Saturday morning after fighting a long illness. He was 94.
The fruitful author, Klim, published novels, plays, collections of stories and essays, as well as children's books, becoming a world -famous writer whose work was translated into more than 30 languages.
Ivan Kauders was born on September 14, 1931 in Prague, Klim was faced with his first repressive regime during the Second World War, when his Jewish family was taken to the Nazis concentration camp. Despite the chances, they all survived.
The new communist regime, which acquired power in Czechoslovakia in 1948, first looked promising for Klim and many others that pursued.
Klima belonged to a group of talented writers, including Milan Kunder, Pavel Kokhut and Ludwik Vaulik, who turned to communism after the war with great lavings in order to be bitterly disappointed with his totalitarian nature and ruthless liquidation of opponents.
Klima joined the Communist Party in 1953, in the same year his father was imprisoned for political reasons. He was expelled from the party in 1967 after criticism of the communist regime in a speech at a meeting of writers.
A year later, his works were banned after the military invasion, headed by the Council in 1968, crushed the liberal reforms of the government of Alexander Dubchek and ended the more liberal era, known as the Prague Spring.
“The crazy 20th century that I write about is associated with totalitarian ideologies that were responsible for incredible crimes,” Klim Czech public radio in 2010 said about her two-volume memoirs “My Crazy Age”.
“And this happened despite the fact that these countries belonged to our civilization, they were countries with a rich cultural tradition,” he said.
After studying the Czech language and literary theory at the University of Charles in Prague in the 1950s, Klima worked as an editor in several literary magazines and began to write for magazines. His multilayer stories and novels, including his famous “judge in court”, captured the situation that the cars of the totalitarian state face.
“The main character deals with a key topic for him,” Klim said about his masterpiece, which was first published in German in Switzerland in 1979. – Does society have the right to pick up someone’s life? And what is the judge who opposes the death penalty in the society that requires this? “
Returning from teaching at the University of Michigan in 1969-1970, Klima joined the Czech dissident movement. His books at that time were released at home only in underground publications.
Nevertheless, unlike many other opponents of communism, Klima basically did not need to do black work, just to make ends with the ends of the support that he received from the author of Philip Roth. The American writer repeatedly visited Czechoslovakia in the 1970s to help Klim, Kunder and other forbidden authors, and oversaw the publication of their works in the United States.
After the 1989 velvet revolution, led by the deceased Vaklov Havel, drove the communist rule in his homeland, Klima focused on the full time on writing. In addition to the “Judicial Court”, his other well -known works include “love and garbage”, “my golden deals” and “the spirit of Prague and other essays”.
Unlike its complex, kafkaesque for adults, Klim's books for children were more playful. They included a script for several episodes with the participation of the famous Czech hero of the cartoon “Little Mole”.
In 2002, Havel – by that time the president of the country, awarded Klim Medal for the outstanding service of the Czech Republic. In the same year, Klima also won the prestigious Franz Kafka prize.
Of all the turbulent times that he saw, Klim said that at the moment when he left the Nazi concentration camp free, and his most vivid experience was alive.
“There is only life or death,” he said. “Nothing else matters.”
