Download e-book for kindle: To the Castle and Back by Václav Havel, Paul Wilson

By Václav Havel, Paul Wilson

ISBN-10: 0307369420

ISBN-13: 9780307369420

An astonishingly candid memoir from the acclaimed, dissident playwright elected President after the dramatic Czechoslovakian Velvet Revolution -- probably the most revered political figures of our time.

As author and statesman, Václav Havel performed a necessary half within the profound alterations that happened in principal Europe within the final many years of the 20 th century. during this so much intimate memoir, he writes approximately his transition from outspoken dissident and political prisoner to a participant at the foreign degree in 1989 as newly elected president of Czechoslovakia after the ousting of the Soviet Union, and, in l993, as president of the newly shaped Czech Republic.

Havel offers complete rein to his impassioned stance opposed to the devastation wrought by way of communism, however the scope of his main issue during this engrossing memoir extends a ways past the situations he confronted in his personal nation. The booklet is stuffed with anecdotes of his interactions with global figures: providing a peace pipe to Mikhail Gorbachev, meditating with the Dali Lama, confessing to Pope John Paul II and partying with invoice and Hilary Clinton. Havel stocks his techniques at the way forward for the eu Union and the function of nationwide id in today's international. He explains why he has come to alter his brain in regards to the warfare in Iraq, and he discusses the political and private reverberations he faces as a result of his preliminary aid of the invasion. He writes with equivalent intelligence and candour approximately matters as assorted because the conceitedness of western strength politics, the loss of life of his first spouse and his personal conflict with lung cancer.

Woven via are inner memos he wrote in the course of his presidency that take us behind the curtain of the Prague citadel -- the government's seat of energy -- displaying the inner workings of the place of work and revealing Havel's venture to behave as his country's judgment of right and wrong, or even, every now and then, its leader social convenor.

Written with attribute eloquence, wit and well-honed irony mixed with an unfailing experience of ask yourself on the path his existence has taken, To the fortress and Back is a revelation of 1 of crucial political figures of our time.

[/i]From the Hardcover edition.[i]

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Extra resources for To the Castle and Back

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So flagrant an outrage of course called for strong measures of repression, and a prosecution was conducted by the University against the principal offenders at the summer assizes of 1826. Several of them were sentenced, in consequence, to various terms of imprisonment. An office like this, which demands, above all things, EARLY YEARS AND LIFE AT CAMBRIDGE. 43 determination and moral courage, coupled with thorough tact and sound sense in the conduct of details, in order to avoid drawing himself and the University into troublesome disputes and ill-will, was one for which he was pre-eminently fitted.

And by expressing a wish sometimes to remove to the south, if Providence should clearly open the way. And again, in another letter : As to temporal circumstances or advantages, the situation is indeed poor and unpromising. But as these had no weight with me in undertaking it, so I trust I shall never be weak and faithless enough to vex myself about them. I feel a conviction that I did right in taking the place, and I will trust in the gracious overruling of God to make it appear so in the end. Having once accepted the post, however, he threw himself heartily and earnestly into the work he found there, and speedily received a very warm and affectionate welcome from many of the inhabitants.

The curate in charge there was a Mr. Clarke, a connection of his through his brother-in-law, J. Stephen, Esq. How completely he had already attempted to fulfil the charge imposed upon him by his dying father, of watching over the temporal and spiritual interests of the rest of his family, will be shown by the following extracts from a letter to his aunt, written just after his entry to College. We quote at some length, in order to show how remote his thoughts and cares already were from those of the bulk of freshmen in their first term.

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To the Castle and Back by Václav Havel, Paul Wilson


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