Summer Meditations by Vaclav Havel

Summer Meditations by Vaclav Havel

In a book written while he was president of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel combines the same powerful eloquence, moral passion, and abiding wisdom that informed his writing as a dissident and playwright, with a candor unprecedented from one with the broad perspective and infinite responsibility of governing a country.

Havel, now president of the Czech Republic, addresses the legacy of Communism as the euphoria of the Velvet Revolution gives way to a more problematic reality. Yet even as he grapples with the challenges of political change, he affirms his belief in a politics motivated by moral responsibility; in an economy tempered by compassion; and in the central roles of art and culture in the transformation of society. Summer Meditations is not only a timely and necessary testament of events in Eastern Europe but a profound reflection upon the nature and practice of politics and a stirring call for morality, civility, and openness in public life throughout the world.

Vaclav Havel was elected President of Czechoslovakia in 1989 and President of the Czech Republic in 1992. He is the author of many plays, essays, collections of letters, and memoirs, including Open Letters and Summer Meditations. Paul Wilson translated or cotranslated those books as well as Havel's Letters to Olga, Disturbing the Peace, and The Art of the Impossible. Peter Steiner is Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Deserts of Bohemia: Czech Fiction and Its Social Context and Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics, both from Cornell.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780679744979
ISBN 10	0679744975
Title	Summer Meditations
Author	Vaclav Havel
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	1993-06-01
Number of pages	176
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.