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Ivan Klíma

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born

September 14, 1931 in Prague, Czech Republic

gender

male

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Ivan Klíma (born 14 September 1931, Prague) is a Czech novelist and playwright. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
Less well known than the work of his contemporary Milan Kundera, Klíma' s writings are generally seen to be much more overtly political, though there are numerous similarities between their works, most notably a tendency towards adultery in their protagonists.
Klíma's early childhood in Prague was happy and uneventful, but this all changed with the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, after the Munich Agreement. He had been unaware that both his parents had Jewish ancestry; neither were observant Jews, but this was immaterial to the Germans.
In November 1941, first his father Vilém Klíma, and then in...more Ivan Klíma (born 14 September 1931, Prague) is a Czech novelist and playwright. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
Less well known than the work of his contemporary Milan Kundera, Klíma' s writings are generally seen to be much more overtly political, though there are numerous similarities between their works, most notably a tendency towards adultery in their protagonists.
Klíma's early childhood in Prague was happy and uneventful, but this all changed with the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, after the Munich Agreement. He had been unaware that both his parents had Jewish ancestry; neither were observant Jews, but this was immaterial to the Germans.
In November 1941, first his father Vilém Klíma, and then in December, he and his mother and brother were ordered to leave for the concentration camp at Theriesenstadt (Terezín), where he was to remain until liberation by the Red Army in May, 1945. Both he and his parents survived incarceration - a miracle at that time - Terezín was a holding camp for Jews from central and southern Europe, and was regularly cleared of its overcrowded population by transports to "the East", death camps such as Auschwitz.
Klíma has written graphically of this period in articles in the UK literary magazine, GRANTA, particularly "A Childhood in Terezin" (GRANTA 44, 1993, pp 191–208). It was while living in these extreme conditions that he says he first experienced "the liberating power that writing can give", after reading a school essay to his class. He was also in the midst of a story-telling community, pressed together under remarkable circumstances where death was ever-present. Children were quartered with their mothers, where he was exposed to a rich verbal culture of song and anecdote.
This remarkable and unusual background was not the end of the Klíma's introduction to the great historical forces that shaped mid-century Europe. With liberation came the rise of the Czech Communist regime, and the replacement of Nazi tyranny with proxy Soviet control of the inter-war Czech democratic experiment. His childhood hopes of fairy tale triumphs of good over evil became an adult awareness that it was often "not the forces of good and evil that do battle with each other, but merely two different evils, in competition for the control of the world" (ibid, 1993, 205).
The early show trials and murders of those who opposed the new regime had already begun, and Klíma's father was again imprisoned, this time by his own countrymen. It is this dark background that is the crucible out of which Klíma's written material was shaped: the knowledge of the depths of human cruelty, along with a private need for personal integrity, the struggle of the individual to keep whatever personal values the totalitarian regimes he lived under were attempting to obliterate.

biography from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Kl%...(less)

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Books by Ivan Klíma

Average rating: 3.76 · 1,010 ratings · 127 reviews · 29 distinct works

	Love and Garbage by Ivan Klíma, Ewald Osers (Translator), Oscar Osers (Translator) 3.85 avg rating — 259 ratings — published 1986 — 7 editions	My rating:
	Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light: A Novel 3.56 avg rating — 126 ratings — published 1995 — 12 editions	My rating:
	روح پراگ by Ivan Klíma, خشایار دیهیمی (translator) 3.81 avg rating — 200 ratings — published 1387 — 9 editions	My rating:
	My Golden Trades by Ivan Klíma, Paul Wilson (Translator), Ivan Klima 4.01 avg rating — 70 ratings — published 1990 — 5 editions	My rating:
	No Saints or Angels by Ivan Klíma (Author), Gerald Turner (Translator) 3.65 avg rating — 80 ratings — published 2001 — 5 editions	My rating:
	My First Loves 3.92 avg rating — 49 ratings — published 1985 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Judge On Trial by Ivan Klíma, A.G. Brain (Translator) 3.72 avg rating — 54 ratings — published 1991 — 6 editions	My rating:
	The Ultimate Intimacy by Ivan Klíma, A.G. Brain, Ivan Klima 3.74 avg rating — 39 ratings — published 1997 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Lovers for a Day: New and Collected Stories on Love by Ivan Klíma, Gerald Turner (Translator), Ivan Klima 3.57 avg rating — 42 ratings — published 1999 — 5 editions	My rating:
	Moje šílené století I 4.43 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2010	My rating:

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Quotes by Ivan Klíma

“To destroy is easier than to create, and that is why so many people are ready to demonstrate against what they reject. But what would they say if one asked them what they wanted instead?”
― Ivan Klíma, Love and Garbage

4 people liked it

“...there is little that comes so close to death as fulfilled love.”
― Ivan Klíma, Love and Garbage

3 people liked it

“I realised the amazing power of literature and of the human imagination generally: to make the dead live and to stop the living from dying.”
― Ivan Klíma, Love and Garbage

3 people liked it

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