"Klíma has endured as a writer, endured as a human being, writing of the great themes of freedom, honesty and love and politics, and gazing with an unsparing eye on the lies of Communism and the moral miasma of post-Communist freedom." ?BBCIvan Klíma, "a writer of enormous power and originality" (The New York Times Book Review), has penned an intimate autobiography that explores his life under two totalitarian regimes: Nazism and Communism. More than memoir, Klíma explores the ways in which the epoch and its dominating ideologies impacted the lives, character, and morality of his generation.Klíma’s story begins in the 1930s, in the Terezin concentration camp outside of Prague where he was forced to spend almost four years of his childhood. He reveals how the post-war atmosphere supported and encouraged the spread of communist principles over the next few decades and how an informal movement to change the system developed inside the Party. These political events form the backdrop to Klíma’s experiences with the arrest and trial of his father, the early revolt of young writers against socialist realism, his first literary successes, and his travels to the free part of Europe, which strengthened his awareness of living in the midst of a colossal lie.Klíma also captures the brief period of liberation during the Prague Spring of 1968, in which he played an active role, the Soviet invasion that crushed the political reforms, and the rise of the dissident movement up until the collapse of the communist regime in the midst of the Velvet Revolution of November, 1989.Including insightful essays on topics related to social history, political thinking, love and freedom, My Crazy Century provides a profoundly rich and moving personal history of national evolution. Ivan Klíma’s first autobiography and perhaps his most significant work, it encapsulates a remarkable life from the vantage point of one lived under occupation."Klíma engagingly portrays the complex path of his own thinking and his and his family’s fate." ?Czech Literature Read Less