A Cup of Coffee with My Interrogator by Ludvik Vaculik

Vaculik has worked as a shoemaker, teacher, soldier, and journalist, and is considered one of the best Czech novelists of the postwar period. In 1963, he published his first novel, The Busy Home. From 1966 to 1968, he was the editor of Literarni Listy, which was later suppressed by the government. Vaculik became well-known in Czechoslovakia after the publication of his novel The Axe in 1966. This work, according to Neal Ascherson, is about a lonely farmer who loses his own family relationships and friendships in order to bring socialism collectivization to his village in Moravia, only to be destroyed himself by the very challenge that his own integrity presents to the corrupt Stalinist bureaucracy of the new order.

Vaculik was dismissed from the Writers' Union in 1967 after speaking out against the Novotny dictatorship at the Writers' Union Congress, but was later readmitted during the Prague Spring of 1968. Vaculik wrote the Two Thousand Word Manifesto at this time, which was signed by thousands and is thought to have influenced Soviet officials' decision to intervene militarily.