My Mad Century

In the year of the ninetieth birthday of one of the most famous Czech writers of the 20th century, Ivan Klíma, his memoirs My Mad Century are published in one volume. The author describes his life in the twentieth century, in which he experienced two devastating dictatorships, from his childhood under the German Protectorate until the breakthrough year of 1989. He calls it "the mad century" – as a stretch of history that we cannot understand, just as we cannot understand a madman. Klíma not only delved into his personal past, but interspersed his memories with a series of essays in which he reflected on individual and social phenomena in the "age of extremes". The new edition of the memoirs, which have rightly become one of the classic titles of this genre, is supplemented by a text by the writer's son Michal, who summarises the last thirty years of his life in freedom, and a number of colour photographs.