Ludvík Vaculík

Ludvík Vaculík was born in 1926 in Brumov, Czechoslovakia. For four decades he has been providing a brillant commentary on Czech cultural and political life in his weekly feuilletons in Literární noviny. The Axe, The Guinea Pigs and his chronicles A Cup of Coffee with My Interrogator established his international reputation as one of the finest authors of his generation.

In June 1968, Ludvík Vaculík published his Two Thousand Words, in which he urged citizens to replace dictatorship with democracy. From 1973—1989, he ran Padlock Editions, a samizdat publishing house which printed and distributed over 400 banned titles. Vaculík was a founding member of Charta 77.

In the early eighties, Ludvík Vaculík published The Czech Dream Book, a diary-novel which recorded the real and imaginary events of 1979. In How to Make a Boy, he moved away from public and political concerns into the more difficult territory of modern relationships. Since then, he has published My Dear Classmates, Immemoirs, A Mountain Trip to Praděd, The Last Word, Dear Mr. Mikule, and most recently Piano Classes.