"This must be the biography of the year" (Observer)

Published: 15 December 2014

According to a leading British newspaper The Observer, Michael Zantovsky´s book on the late Czech president Vaclav Havel is a biography of the year

The Observer (December 7, 2014) reads: Václav Havel would have relished such a moment. In Michael Zantovsky’s deeply sympathetic life, Havel (Atlantic £25), he comes across as a profound ironist: a humane, self-deprecating, determined nonconformist whose crucial role in the Velvet Revolution was to extricate his people from the grip of Soviet communism and sponsor the conditions in which a modern Czech republic could be born. Zantovsky says that, as Havel’s press secretary and spokesman, he “probably spent more time with the new Czech president than any other person, including his wife”. The upshot is an enthralling, sometimes thrilling, portrait of an infinitely varied character, a man of deep contradictions nurtured by equally deep convictions. In short, a modern great. This must be the biography of the year.

Source: Embassy of the Czech Republic in London

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