Václav Havel Library Essay Competition Results

The theme of this year’s edition was: What good is a president to us and what should they be like? Václav Havel’s essays, such as The Power of the Powerless and A Word About Words, have become classic texts of Czech literature; they have been translated into tens of languages, and are among the few truly world-famous works of Czech culture. This is also why it is necessary to keep cultivating the essay genre in the Czech language – not in the sense of imitating Václav Havel’s writing, but in the spirit of his courage to name unpleasant problems and search for unconventional solutions to them.

This year’s jury has included the following personalities from Czech public life: political scientist Jakub Eberle, journalist Barbora Chaloupková, novelist Zuzana Kultánová, philosopher Tereza Matějčková and Korea expert and writer Nina Špitálníková.