Ivan Klíma, Czech creator and anti-communist dissident, dies at 94

Ivan Klíma, a Czech creator and anti-communist dissident whose work and life had been formed by Europe’s Twentieth-century totalitarian regimes, has died.

His son Michal advised the Czech CTK information company that Klíma died on Saturday (October 4, 2025) morning at house after battling a protracted sickness. He was 94.

A prolific creator, Klima revealed novels, performs, quick story collections and essays in addition to kids’s books, changing into an internationally identified author whose works had been translated into greater than 30 languages.

Born Ivan Kauders on Sept 14, 1931, in Prague, Klima confronted his first repressive regime throughout World War II when his Jewish household was transported to the Nazis’ Theresienstadt focus camp. Against the chances, all of them survived.

The new Communist regime that took energy in Czechoslovakia in 1948 seemed promising at first for Klima and lots of others who had been persecuted.

Klima belonged to a gaggle of proficient writers — together with Milan Kundera, Pavel Kohout and Ludvik Vaculíok — who turned to communism with excessive hopes after the warfare solely to be bitterly dissatisfied by its totalitarian nature and its ruthless liquidation of opponents.

Klíma joined the Communist Party in 1953, the identical yr his father was imprisoned for political causes. He was expelled from the social gathering in 1967 after criticising the Communist regime in a speech at a writers’ assembly.

A yr later, his writings had been banned after a Soviet-led army invasion in 1968 crushed the liberal reforms of Alexander Dubcek’s authorities and ended a extra liberal period often known as the “Prague Spring.”

“The craziness of the Twentieth century that I write about has to do with the totalitarian ideologies which had been accountable for unbelievable crimes,” Klíma advised Czech public radio in 2010 about his two-volume memoirs “My Crazy Century.”

“And that occurred even supposing these nations belonged to our civilisation, they had been the nations with a wealthy cultural custom,” he stated.

After learning Czech language and literary concept at Charles University in Prague within the Nineteen Fifties, Klíma labored as an editor for a number of literary journals and started writing for magazines. His multi-layered tales and novels, together with his extremely acclaimed “Judge on Trial,” captured the scenario of people going through the equipment of the totalitarian state.

“The most important character is coping with a key subject for him,” Klíma stated about his masterpiece, which was first revealed in German in Switzerland in 1979. “Has the society a proper to take anybody’s life? And what has a decide who opposes capital punishment to do within the society that calls for it?”

After getting back from a instructing stint on the University of Michigan in 1969-1970, Klíma joined the Czech dissident motion. His books on the time had been launched at house solely in underground publications.

Still, in contrast to many different opponents of communism, Klíma principally didn’t must do menial jobs simply to make ends meet due to the assist he acquired from creator Philip Roth. The American author visited Czechoslovakia repeatedly within the Nineteen Seventies to assist Klíma, Kundera and different banned authors, and oversaw the publication of their works within the United States.

After the 1989 Velvet Revolution led by the late Václav Havel ousted communist rule in his homeland, Klima centered full-time on writing. In addition to “Judge on Trial,” his different well-known works embody “Love and Garbage,” “My Golden Trades” and “The Spirit of Prague and Other Essays.”

Unlike his difficult, Kafkaesque grownup fiction, Klíma’s books for kids had been extra playful. They included a screenplay for a number of episodes that includes the famed Czech cartoon hero the Little Mole.

In 2002, Havel — by then the nation’s president — awarded Klima the Medal for Outstanding Service to the Czech Republic. That similar yr, Klíma additionally received the distinguished Franz Kafka Prize.

Of all of the turbulent instances he noticed, Klíma stated the second he left the Nazi focus camp free and alive was his most vivid expertise.

“There’s solely life or demise,” he stated. “Nothing else issues.”