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Czech and Slovak Collections at the Library of Congress

Czech and Slovak Literature: Special Features

Old hand carved seats in Velehrad Church in Moravia, Czech-baroque style. c1921. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Reading Room.

During the Communist era a number of Czech and Slovak authors left the country and, for political reasons, many others were banned from publishing their works in Czechoslovakia. Especially in the two decades between 1968 and 1989, important works by exiled authors were published in several Western countries. At the same time, silenced authors published samizdat editions of their writings in Czechoslovakia. Two special agreements, one with '68 Publishers' in Toronto, the other with the Czechoslovak Samizdat Documentation Center in West Germany, ensured the acquisition of this type of literary work, without which the Library's collection of modern Czech and Slovak literature would be incomplete.

The Library's collection of exile literature is several hundred volumes strong. Authors such as Josef Škvorecký, Milan Kundera, Arnošt Lustig and many others are represented by most of their novels and stories written and published outside Czechoslovakia. The samizdat collection consists of a selection of about 500 monographic titles and 40 periodical titles published in the 1970s and 1980s. It documents well both the scope and the contents of 'unofficial' literature from this period, and includes works of such important authors as Jan Patočka, Václav Černý, and Jindřich Chalupecký.