Biography, Essay

“I consider Martin Putna’s book Václav Havel. Duchovní portrét v rámu české kultury (Václav Havel. A Spiritual Portrait Within the Framework of Czech Culture) to be an eminently important work about a seminal personality of Czech history. This is not an ordinary biography, a factual description of events. Putna illuminates the reader about the cultural milieu that gave rise to Václav Havel. He offers an inside view of a direct participant while using a detached view of a historian in the narration. Putna’s writing draws from a meticulous study of available sources and, at the same time, is elegant and readable. I’m convinced that this book represents a crucial contribution to the so far superficial and biased thinking about Václav Havel and thus ends up raising the bar.“

Erazim Kohák