History

The motto Národ sobě – “From the Nation to Itself” – inscribed over the proscenium arch of Prague’s National Theatre symbolizes the importance theatre holds for the Czechs.

The life fates of the people who, during their childhood, experienced the Nazi extermination of the Jews, escaped the planned destruction and got into the castle sanatoriums of the Christian humanist Přemysl Pitter, written by Pavel Kohn and was first published in Czech in 2000.

The papacy can be viewed from many different aspects, and each one of them contains something fascinating and surprising for the modern man.

Most, one of the most impressive historical cities of Northern Bohemia, was destroyed in the sixties and seventies for coal mining. When plans to redevelop the city began, hope and expectations ran high; in the end, however, Most became a symbol for the heartless incompetence of Czechoslovak communism.

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.

An English translation of a successful title by the first post-1989 Czech ambassador to Israel, Miloš Pojar. The book is a result of the author’s life-long interest in this difficult and taboo theme.

A dialogue of Karel Hvížďala, a curious journalist from Prague, with Jiří Přibáň, philosopher of law from the British Cardiff, about the turning points of our history at the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Republic with a broad geographic and temporal context from 9th to 21st century.

Every five years from 1955 to 1985, mass Czechoslovak gymnastic demonstrations and sporting parades called Spartakiads were held to mark the 1945 liberation of Czechoslovakia.