Interview: IVAN KLIMA

Interview with Ivan Klíma

On a cold winter day, two weeks before Christmas, I visited Mr. Ivan Klíma in his study. I had brought journalists and writers to meet him several times before. He had just published his autobiography, My Crazy Century, which answered almost all the questions we had about his life.

He told me that he had stopped writing because he felt he was too old and had already written everything he wanted to write. He still wrote letters to friends, however, and enjoyed his everyday life with the forest in front of his window.

He said he no longer wanted to take long trips at his age, but still went to the centre of Prague every week. He liked to keep in touch with the city and observe how it was changing.

In conversations with visitors, he often spoke about surviving the concentration camp, his decision to return to Czechoslovakia after working in the United States in the 1970s, his views on the younger generation in Germany, and the idea of the nation-state.

Progress can sometimes be rapid, and sometimes painfully slow.

By Stella H.