Evening of Prison Correspondence from the Normalisation Period
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: November 26, 2015, 19:00 – 21:00
Literary-historical evening on the phenomenon of the prison correspondence of political prisoners in the 1970s and 1980s which began involuntarily in normalisation Czechoslovakia, on censorship and the pitfalls of communication through wire and bars and on “the literary challenge of writing something when you can’t actually write anything.”
The Václav Havel Library’s new publication Perzekuce Václava Havla. Dopisy a dokumenty z let 1968–1989 (The Persecution of Václav Havel: Letters and Documents, 1968–1989) will be presented during the evening. The book’s editor Jan Hron, historians Jiří Suk and Tomáš Bursík and literary historian Daniela Iwashita will explore prison correspondence from the perspective of experts, while direct participants Petruška Šustrová and Jan Ruml will remember their own authentic experience as writers of letters to/from prison. František Kreuzmann will read excerpts from letters. Tomáš Černý will serve as host.
The event is taking place as an accompanying programme to the colloquium Possibilities of and Perspectives on Interdisciplinary Research into the History of the Prison System in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s.
The evening is being organised by the Václav Havel Library in cooperation with the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, the Institute of Czech Literature at the Czech Academy of Sciences and the association PoliticalPrisoners.eu.