Book City to review Ivan Klima’s memoirs “My Crazy Century”
TEHRAN –(Iranart)- The Book City Institute in Tehran plans to review Czech writer Ivan Klima’s book “My Crazy Century: A Memoir” during an online session on Tuesday.
The review session, which is scheduled to be attended by translator Alireza Beheshti Shirazi and critics Reza Alizadeh and Sadeq Vafai, will be held at 3 pm on instagram.com/bookcityculturalcenter.
A Persian translation of the book has recently been published by Rozaneh Publications in Tehran.
Saless, another Tehran-based publisher, has also released a Persian translation of the book by Forugh Puryavari.
“My Crazy Century” (“Moje silene stoleti”) was originally published in 2009, and an English translation of the memoir by Craig Cravens was released by Grove Press in 2013.
In his intimate autobiography, spanning six decades that included war, totalitarianism, censorship and the fight for democracy, acclaimed writer Klima reflects back on his remarkable life and this critical period of twentieth-century history.
Klima’s story begins in the 1930s on the outskirts of Prague where he grew up unaware of his concealed Jewish heritage. It came as a surprise when his family was transported to the Terezin concentration camp – and an even greater surprise when most of them survived.
They returned home to a city in economic turmoil and falling into the grip of Communism. Against this tumultuous backdrop, Klima discovered his love of literature and matured as a writer. But as the regime further encroached on daily life, arresting his father and censoring his work, Klima recognized the party for what it was: a deplorable, colossal lie.
The true nature of oppression became clear to him and many of his peers, among them Josef Skvorecky, Milan Kundera and Vaclav Havel. From the brief hope of freedom during the Prague Spring of 1968 to Charter 77 and the eventual collapse of the regime in 1989’s Velvet Revolution, Klima’s revelatory account provides a profoundly rich personal and national history.
source: Tehran Times