Samizdat Past & Present

Much of what we now consider the canon of twentieth-century Czech literature - the work of authors like Bohumil Hrabal, Ludvík Vaculík, and Jáchym Topol, among many others - has, in fact, just recently become widely available to readers. Long published only in censored form or in secret among political dissidents, this body of underground literature is collectively known as samizdat.

This anthology of texts by Czech literary scientists presents the phenomenon of the samizdat and its historical transformation.

The chapters primarily focus on the definition of the samizdat itself as well as the extensive controversy over the concept of unofficial literature. The scholars also pay attention to the origin, development and characteristics of the various samizdat editions; individual chapters are devoted to underground production and censorship. One chapter deals with the relationship between domestic samizdat production and exile literature. In the final chapters of the publication, samizdat is covered also in the international context, in particular in the Polish and Russian contexts.

Samizdat Past and Present, is a representative publication presenting the diverse forms of samizdat and has the potential to become a basic guide on the issue.

The book provides an expert introduction to these writings and their history, offering insight into both the current wave of literary rediscovery and translation and contemporary debates over censorship. In a diverse array of chapters, Tomáš Glanc gathers together texts from representative figures of Czech samizdat and underground culture of the 1960s to ’80s and provides a useful comparison of Czech, Polish, and Russian samizdat. From literary historians to former samizdat publishers and writers with firsthand experience of communist censorship, secret police, fake trials, and imprisonment, the authors of Samizdat Past and Present illuminate the complexities of a literature written under censorship and the struggle for freedom of thought in a totalitarian regime.