Havel

August 25, 2014
Václav Havel’s onetime press secretary and longtime friend delivers a vivid and intimate biography of the playwright-turned-statesman who came to embody the soul of the Czech nation. Though Žantovský claims to have relied on his “dispassionate notes” and training as a clinical psychologist while writing, the unfettered access he enjoyed to Havel during his presidency’s most eventful years undoubtedly accounts for much of the book’s insight into his personality—equal parts self-doubt, stubbornness, and vision. After covering Havel’s riches-to-rags childhood (his family lost its wealth in the 1948 Communist takeover, when Havel was 12 years old) the book focuses on his achievements as a dissident, highlighting the qualities that made him the ideal person to peacefully negotiate an end to Communist rule during the 1989 Velvet Revolution. Žantovský evokes the heady excitement of Havel’s early days as Czechoslovakia’s first popularly elected president, assembling a government of fellow artists and philosophers and pursuing a “continent-wide” agenda to bring his country back into Western Europe. Žantovský lends a more impartial eye to Havel’s subsequent 10-year term as president of the newly formed Czech Republic, when he was no longer at Havel’s side, and to the travails of his last years. This moving, perceptive chronicle succeeds in showing the many dimensions of a towering 20th-century figure.

September 15, 2014
An insightful biography of the unlikely leader of the Velvet Revolution. In his first book written in English, diplomat and translator Zantovsky, Czech ambassador to the Court of St. James, chronicles the eventful life of playwright, political activist and Czech president Vaclav Havel (1936-2011). As Havel's press secretary and adviser, Zantovsky admits his affection for his friend, but he presents a balanced, candid portrait of his subject's personality, achievements and inner demons. Born to privilege, Havel came of age in communist Czechoslovakia, witness to oppression and injustice that intensified after the Soviet-led invasion of 1968. His political critiques found their way into his plays, but he struggled with "the question of a passive participation in evil." His characters were often weak and flawed, reflecting, Zantovsky believes, Havel's view of himself in the 1960s and '70s, when he lived the sybaritic life of a celebrity. Although he felt driven "to do extraordinary things," Havel's "strong sense of order and harmony" resisted the messy process of revolution, and his excessive courtesy tempered his tolerance for conflict. Nevertheless, in 1989, emerging from an increasingly active resistance movement that resulted in his imprisonment, he led Czechoslovakia's peaceful transformation from totalitarianism to democracy and served as president for four terms. "Being in power makes me permanently suspicious of myself," he once remarked, though he reveled in the theatricality of his role. Installed in the dreary, cavernous Palace Castle, he commissioned an Oscar-winning designer to create new uniforms for the Castle Guard. Sky blue with white and red trim, they "looked a little like costumes from a Franz Lehar operetta." Sustained by alcohol, cigarettes and a cornucopia of uppers and downers, by 1998, Havel's physical condition weakened, along with his role in the newly formed Czech Republic, after Slovakia became independent. By then, though, he had become a global celebrity, the darling of liberals, reformers and intellectuals. Zantovsky brings an intimate perspective to this impressive biography of a man and history of a beleaguered nation.

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Starred review from December 1, 2014
Biographers of Vclav Havel do not have it easy. The Czech dissident playwright turned president's many sides and larger-than-life persona have variously inspired and confounded even those who knew him best. But antovsk enjoys several advantages. One is proximity: as Havel's press secretary, advisor, and longtime friend, antovsk enjoyed broad access to his subject during Havel's years in politics. An accomplished literary translator, antovsk is also well positioned to comment upon the content of Havel's plays and other literary works. Perhaps most significant, however, is the author's training as a psychologist interested in theories of motivation and sexual behavior. antovsk narrates the events of Havel's life, from his privileged upbringing to his participation in the Charter 77 dissident circle to his variously triumphant and troubled presidency, and does so thoroughly and engagingly. But the core of this biography is an abiding fascination with the deep duality of Havel's personality as expressed through often contradictory impulses: his need for public adulation but also his longing for solitude; his consistent adoration for his wife, Olga, but his equally consistent appetite for other women; his need to write but his inability to completely give himself over to his craft. The result is a rare biographical success: affectionate but balanced, comprehensive but also uncommonly intimate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)