A Czech who travels to Ukraine to find his other self. A gang of homeless children that the war drives out of a cellar that residents want to use as a shelter. A German couple who “rent a womb” in Ukraine but get stuck there after the birth of their child. A teenager who delivers lavash in besieged Mariupol and hesitates about when to get out before until it’s too late. A Russian academic and her lover decide to protest in central Moscow with a pas de deux from Swan Lake… No, the protagonists of these short stories aren’t soldiers on the frontline – but they will never be the same again either.

Skutečná cesta ven (A Real Way Out) is the authentic story of Patrik Banga, outlining how he went from a Roma district to being a leading Czech journalist. The narrative starts in the 1990s in Prague’s Žižkov, in those days far from the up-and-coming quarter it is today. A place filled with misery, drugs, alcohol, prostitution and fights. Growing up in its Roma community meant one thing – predestination to a life of exclusion.

What links the ongoing war in Ukraine to the Russian-Chechen conflict? The leading contemporary Polish foreign correspondent Wojciech Jagielski has covered armed conflicts in Georgia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Tajikistan as a journalist and is a long-time observer of developments in the post-Soviet space. After publishing his Praying for Rain in Czech (2018), publishers Absynt are now bringing out a translation of Towers of Stone, which is focused on Chechnya. The new book explores not only the conflict with Russia but also its cultural-social causes, as well as offering a unique opportunity to understand contemporary Chechen-Russian relations.

Discussion between editors from the weekly Respekt and their guests. For more details and the names of guests visit www.vaclavhavel.cz prior to the event.

Author’s reading and book launch.

Today it’s possible to pay in shops by phone and to keep a train or tram ticket in one’s device. Most have contentedly forgotten how the insides of the banks where they have their money actually look. But it is still necessary to visit civic offices in person, adapting not only to their opening times but also, frequently, incomprehensible demands. When will the state learn to provide citizens with services electronically? Why didn’t it do so ages ago, when this generally runs smoothly abroad? What’s preventing this? Can the current government change the situation? What specifically is it doing? All of this will come up in a debate on digitalisation of the state administration, whose main guest will be Ivan Bartoš, deputy prime minister for digitalisation and minister for regional development.

Hard as it is to believe, this year we mark the sad 10th anniversary of the death of Miloslav Petrusek (1936–2012), one of the most important Czech sociologists of recent decades. Petrusek was not only a prolific author, a skilled essayist and a charismatic populiser but also a popular lecturer; one of his courses had the mysterious title “Chronotopos, referring to the interweaving of human destinies in place and time”.

Discussion and reading featuring six Czech and Scottish poets. After a year of online meetings within the project Czech Scottish Poetry Connections, where they discussed their work and translated one another, they will meet face to face and discuss outwardly simple questions about the role of poetry: personal, social and political. Jitka Bret-Srbová, Ondřej Lipár, Rob Mackenzie, Niall O’Gallagher, Alycia Pirmohamed and Olina Stehlíková will debate and read. Chaired by Alexandra Büchler. The evening will take place in English and Czech.

In the days following November 17, 1989, the Czech and Slovak citizens took responsibility for the destiny of their country and embarked on decades of a dramatic and largely successful transformation. From this perspective, the perfect storm of recent crises, from the COVID pandemic through Putin's aggression against Ukraine, the energy crisis and the disruption of globalization chains and processes, together with the challenges of the democratisation of knowledge and the advent of the ‘postfactual era’, can be seen as different symptoms of a single crisis of responsibility that Václav Havel predicted in his address to the US Congress more than thirty years ago.

On this state holiday we will introduce a new publication about Hana Jüptnerová (1952–2019), a dissident and Charter signatory who was a German teacher in Jilemnice and Vrchlabí. She said it felt “like a cleansing bath” when she visited the nearby. Hrádeček, where Václav Havel lent her books. Her inspirational, independent attitude – seen for instance at the memorable funeral of Pavel Wonka in May 1988 – continued after the revolution, when she endeavoured to help repair Czech-German relations. In 2017 she received the Stories of Injustice Prize from People in Need.

The event Národní Promenade, a street celebration of the Day of Struggle for Freedom and Democracy, will again feature Václav Havel’s Living Room. There actors from the National Theatre and the Divadlo Na Zábradlí company will read excerpts from Václav Havel’s works as well as texts by contemporary authors, with this year’s theme set to be persecution and resisting official currents. You can also look forward to meeting us at a VHL book stall.

To be stable, every democratic political system needs firm civic foundations, a strong state that executes its authority under the law and a symbolic apex that completes and symbolises power. A system that lacks foundations is by its nature instable and bound to collapse. Without a strong state a democratic system falls victim to special interests and clientelist structures. A democratic structure that lacks an apex is of necessity shallow, provincial, disjointed and stagnant. If we didn’t have a president, we’d have to invent one.

Debate series with editors from the weekly Echo and their guests, in cooperation with the Václav Havel Library. Discussion chaired by Lenka Zlámalová. For the subject and names of guests visit www.vaclavhavel.cz prior to the event.

Thirty years later the time is slowly approaching when we will soberly reflect on the moment when, after over 70 years of coexistence, the paths of the Czech and Slovak nations diverged, only for them to come together again within the European Union. We often celebrate the fact that we are still so close despite the split back then. But if we are so close, did we really need to break up? Was the division the inevitable outcome of abstract historical forces, as some believe, or the result of the actions of specific individuals and motives? What does the split mean for our understanding of historical events, and what does it say about us?

A programme of music and drama based on the autobiography of Afghan writer Hassan Ali Djan, who some years ago left his homeland in dramatic circumstances and, after arduous travels, obtained asylum in Germany. His story is a reflection of contemporary society, which swings between natural ability and effort to help those in need and old-fashioned prejudices. It is also a reflection of brave determination, tenacity and faith in goodness. The tensions between life and death and danger and courage are expressed through words, music and movement. The literary inspiration is the book Afghanistan. Munich. I. My Escape to a Better Life. The programme will be performed by Brno’s Agadir theatre company.

The launch of Jste to vy? (Is It You?), a memoir by the music, film, theatre and sports journalist and poet Jan Rejžek (1954), familiar to readers of many newspapers and magazines but also for radio and TV shows spanning more than 47 years. The book has a light and entertaining style that does not deny the chief characteristics of the Rejžek writing we know well: irony and self-irony, sarcasm, sharpness and unapologetic criticism, as well as humour, hyperbole and wit. The book is sure to annoy and upset many readers – naturally, it’s Rejžek after all – and will entertain and educate others about numerous details of Czech cultural and social life. In any case it will not leave anyone bored.

Debate with the poet, prose author and essayist Josef Kroutvor, winner of this year’s Jaroslav Seifert Prize. Jiří Peňás of Týdeník Echo will host the evening, while writer Miloš Doležal and accordionist Vladimír Herák will perform.

There are people who write for a living – and there are people who live to write. Pavel Ružek (1951–2011) was undoubtedly one of the latter. He sacrificed everything to writing, including those close to him and his health. However, unlike most such ragged souls he left behind genuinely notable work that ought to become part of the Czech literary canon. This includes not only his extremely raw short stories in the collections Bez kůže (Without Skin) (2010), Bez růže (Without a Rose) (2011) and Bez tebe (Without You) (2022) but also the pose works Budižkničemu (The Good-For-Nothing), Mistr světa (Master of the World) and Obyčejný ráj (Ordinary Paradise), which came out even before the Velvet Revolution.