1.
Toronto
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Toronto is the most populous city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario. With a population of 2,731,571, it is the fourth most populous city in North America after Mexico City, New York City, and Los Angeles. A global city, Toronto is a centre of business, finance, arts, and culture. Aboriginal peoples have inhabited the area now known as Toronto for thousands of years, the city itself is situated on the southern terminus of an ancient Aboriginal trail leading north to Lake Simcoe, used by the Wyandot, Iroquois, and the Mississauga. Permanent European settlement began in the 1790s, after the broadly disputed Toronto Purchase of 1787, the British established the town of York, and later designated it as the capital of Upper Canada. During the War of 1812, the town was the site of the Battle of York, York was renamed and incorporated as the city of Toronto in 1834, and became the capital of the province of Ontario during the Canadian Confederation in 1867. The city proper has since expanded past its original borders through amalgamation with surrounding municipalities at various times in its history to its current area of 630.2 km2. While the majority of Torontonians speak English as their primary language, Toronto is a prominent centre for music, theatre, motion picture production, and television production, and is home to the headquarters of Canadas major national broadcast networks and media outlets. Toronto is known for its skyscrapers and high-rise buildings, in particular the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere. The name Toronto is likely derived from the Iroquois word tkaronto and this refers to the northern end of what is now Lake Simcoe, where the Huron had planted tree saplings to corral fish. A portage route from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron running through this point, in the 1660s, the Iroquois established two villages within what is today Toronto, Ganatsekwyagon on the banks of the Rouge River and Teiaiagonon the banks of the Humber River. By 1701, the Mississauga had displaced the Iroquois, who abandoned the Toronto area at the end of the Beaver Wars, French traders founded Fort Rouillé on the current Exhibition grounds in 1750, but abandoned it in 1759. During the American Revolutionary War, the region saw an influx of British settlers as United Empire Loyalists fled for the British-controlled lands north of Lake Ontario, the new province of Upper Canada was in the process of creation and needed a capital. Dorchester intended the location to be named Toronto, in 1793, Governor John Graves Simcoe established the town of York on the Toronto Purchase lands, instead naming it after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany. Simcoe decided to move the Upper Canada capital from Newark to York, the York garrison was constructed at the entrance of the towns natural harbour, sheltered by a long sandbar peninsula. The towns settlement formed at the end of the harbour behind the peninsula, near the present-day intersection of Parliament Street. In 1813, as part of the War of 1812, the Battle of York ended in the towns capture, the surrender of the town was negotiated by John Strachan. US soldiers destroyed much of the garrison and set fire to the parliament buildings during their five-day occupation, the sacking of York was a primary motivation for the Burning of Washington by British troops later in the war
2.
Ontario
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Ontario, one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada, is located in east-central Canada. It is Canadas most populous province by a margin, accounting for nearly 40 percent of all Canadians. Ontario is fourth-largest in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and it is home to the nations capital city, Ottawa, and the nations most populous city, Toronto. There is only about 1 km of land made up of portages including Height of Land Portage on the Minnesota border. Ontario is sometimes divided into two regions, Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario. The great majority of Ontarios population and arable land is located in the south, in contrast, the larger, northern part of Ontario is sparsely populated with cold winters and is heavily forested. The province is named after Lake Ontario, a thought to be derived from Ontarí, io, a Huron word meaning great lake, or possibly skanadario. Ontario has about 250,000 freshwater lakes, the province consists of three main geographical regions, The thinly populated Canadian Shield in the northwestern and central portions, which comprises over half the land area of Ontario. Although this area mostly does not support agriculture, it is rich in minerals and in part covered by the Central and Midwestern Canadian Shield forests, studded with lakes, Northern Ontario is subdivided into two sub-regions, Northwestern Ontario and Northeastern Ontario. The virtually unpopulated Hudson Bay Lowlands in the north and northeast, mainly swampy. Southern Ontario which is further sub-divided into four regions, Central Ontario, Eastern Ontario, Golden Horseshoe, the highest point is Ishpatina Ridge at 693 metres above sea level located in Temagami, Northeastern Ontario. In the south, elevations of over 500 m are surpassed near Collingwood, above the Blue Mountains in the Dundalk Highlands, the Carolinian forest zone covers most of the southwestern region of the province. A well-known geographic feature is Niagara Falls, part of the Niagara Escarpment, the Saint Lawrence Seaway allows navigation to and from the Atlantic Ocean as far inland as Thunder Bay in Northwestern Ontario. Northern Ontario occupies roughly 87 percent of the area of the province. Point Pelee is a peninsula of Lake Erie in southwestern Ontario that is the southernmost extent of Canadas mainland, Pelee Island and Middle Island in Lake Erie extend slightly farther. All are south of 42°N – slightly farther south than the border of California. The climate of Ontario varies by season and location, the effects of these major air masses on temperature and precipitation depend mainly on latitude, proximity to major bodies of water and to a small extent, terrain relief. In general, most of Ontarios climate is classified as humid continental, Ontario has three main climatic regions
3.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
4.
Expatriate
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An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of their citizenship. In common usage, the term refers to professionals or skilled workers sent abroad by their companies. However, it can refer to retirees and others who have chosen to live outside their native country. Historically, it has referred to exiles. The word expatriate comes from the Latin terms ex and patria, dictionary definitions for the current meaning of the word include, Expatriate, A person who lives outside their native country, or living in a foreign land. The varying use of terms for different groups of foreigners can thus be seen as implying nuances about wealth, intended length of stay, perceived motives for moving, nationality. An older usage of the word expatriate was to refer to an exile, as far back as antiquity, people have gone to live in foreign countries, whether as diplomats, merchants or missionaries. The numbers of such travellers grew markedly after the 15th century with the dawn of the European colonial period, in the 19th century, travel became easier by way of steamship or train. People could more readily choose to live for years in a foreign country. After World War II, decolonisation accelerated, however, lifestyles which had developed among European colonials continued to some degree in expatriate communities. Remnants of the old British Empire, for example, can still be seen in the form of gated communities staffed by domestic workers, social clubs which have survived include the Hash House Harriers and the Royal Selangor. Homesick palates are catered for by specialist food shops, and drinkers can still order a gin and tonic, although pith helmets are mostly confined to military ceremonies, civilians still wear white dinner jackets or even Red Sea rig on occasion. The use of curry powder has long since spread to the metropole, from the 1950s, scheduled flights on jet airliners further increased the speed of international travel. This enabled a hypermobility which led to the jet set, and eventually to global nomads, since the 1990s, the rise of the Internet has allowed some types of worker to become digital nomads. Websites aimed at expatriates began to appear about the same time, the number of expatriates in the world is difficult to determine. In 2013, the United Nations estimated that 232 million people, or 3.2 per cent of the world population, in 2007, only 20 per cent of Dubais population were citizens. Singapore, where 40 per cent of the inhabitants were foreign-born workers, many multinational corporations send employees to foreign countries to work in branch offices or subsidiaries. Expatriate employees allow a parent company to more closely control its foreign subsidiaries and they can also improve global coordination
5.
Exile
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To be in exile means to be away from ones home, while either being explicitly refused permission to return or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return. It can be a form of punishment and solitude and it is common to distinguish between internal exile, i. e. forced resettlement within the country of residence, and external exile, which is deportation outside the country of residence. Although most commonly used to describe a situation, the term is also used for groups. Exile can also be a departure from ones homeland. Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. In some cases the head of state is allowed to go into exile following a coup or other change of government. A wealthy citizen who departs from an abode for a lower tax jurisdiction in order to reduce his/her tax burden is termed a tax exile. Creative people such as authors and musicians who achieve sudden wealth sometimes find themselves among this group, in 2012, Eduardo Saverin, one of the founders of Facebook, made headlines by renouncing his U. S. citizenship before his companys IPO. In some cases a person lives in exile to avoid legal issues. For example, nuns were exiled following the Communist coup détat of 1948 in Czechoslovakia, many Jewish prayers include a yearning to return to Jerusalem and the Jewish homeland. The entire population of Crimean Tatars that remained in their homeland Crimea was exiled on 18 May 1944 to Central Asia as a form of ethnic cleansing and collective punishment on false accusations. At Diego Garcia, between 1967 and 1973 the British Government forcibly removed some 2,000 Chagossian resident islanders to make way for a military base today jointly operated by the US, since the Cuban Revolution over one million Cubans have left Cuba. Most of these self-identify as exiles as their motivation for leaving the island is political in nature, most of the exiles children also consider themselves to be Cuban exiles. It is to be noted that under Cuban law, children of Cubans born abroad are considered Cuban citizens, during a foreign occupation or after a coup détat, a government in exile of a such afflicted country may be established abroad. Exile is a motif in ancient Greek tragedy. In the ancient Greek world, this was seen as a worse than death. The motif reaches its peak on the play Medea, written by Euripides in the fifth century BC, euripides’ Medea has remained the most frequently performed Greek tragedy through the 20th century. After Medea was abandoned by Jason and had become a murderer out of revenge, she fled to Athens and married king Aigeus there, due to a conflict with him, she must leave the Polis and go away into exile
6.
Czech language
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Czech, historically also Bohemian, is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group. It is spoken by over 10 million people and is the language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of being intelligible to a very high degree. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the written standard was codified in the context of the Czech National Revival. The main vernacular, known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague, the Moravian dialects spoken in the eastern part of the country are mostly also counted as Czech, although some of their eastern variants are closer to Slovak. The Czech phoneme inventory is moderate in size, comprising five vowels, words may contain uncommon consonant clusters, including one consonant represented by the grapheme ř, or lack vowels altogether. Czech orthography is simple, and has used as a model by phonologists. Czech is classified as a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family and this branch includes Polish, Kashubian, Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak. Slovak is by far the closest genetic neighbor of Czech, the West Slavic languages are spoken in an area classified as part of Central Europe. Around the 7th century, the Slavic expansion reached Central Europe, the West Slavic polity of Great Moravia formed by the 9th century. The Christianization of Bohemia took place during the 9th and 10th centuries, the Bohemian language is first recorded in writing in glosses and short notes during the 12th to 13th centuries. Literary works written in Czech appear in the early 14th century, the first complete Bible translation also dates to this period. Old Czech texts, including poetry and cookbooks, were produced outside the university as well, literary activity becomes widespread in the early 15th century in the context of the Bohemian Reformation. There was no standardization distinguishing between Czech and Slovak prior to the 15th century, the publication of the Kralice Bible between 1579 and 1593 became very important for standardization of the Czech language in the following centuries. In 1615, the Bohemian diet tried to declare Czech to be the official language of the kingdom. After the Bohemian Revolt which was defeated by the Habsburgs in 1620 and this emigration together with other consequences of the Thirty Years War had a negative impact on the further use of the Czech language. In 1627, Czech and German became official languages of the Kingdom of Bohemia and in the 18th century German became dominant in Bohemia and Moravia, the modern standard Czech language originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century. Changes include the shift of í to ej and é to í and the merging of í
7.
Czechoslovakia
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From 1939 to 1945, following its forced division and partial incorporation into Nazi Germany, the state did not de facto exist but its government-in-exile continued to operate. From 1948 to 1990, Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet bloc with a command economy and its economic status was formalized in membership of Comecon from 1949, and its defense status in the Warsaw Pact of May 1955. A period of liberalization in 1968, known as the Prague Spring, was forcibly ended when the Soviet Union, assisted by several other Warsaw Pact countries. In 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the two states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Form of state 1918–1938, A democratic republic, 1938–1939, After annexation of Sudetenland by Nazi Germany in 1938, the region gradually turned into a state with loosened connections among the Czech, Slovak, and Ruthenian parts. A large strip of southern Slovakia and Carpatho-Ukraine was annexed by Hungary, 1939–1945, The region was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic. A government-in-exile continued to exist in London, supported by the United Kingdom, United States and its Allies, after the German invasion of Russia, Czechoslovakia adhered to the Declaration by United Nations and was a founding member of the United Nations. 1946–1948, The country was governed by a government with communist ministers, including the prime minister. Carpathian Ruthenia was ceded to the Soviet Union, 1948–1989, The country became a socialist state under Soviet domination with a centrally planned economy. In 1960, the country became a socialist republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It was a state of the Soviet Union. 1989–1990, The federal republic consisted of the Czech Socialist Republic, 1990–1992, Following the Velvet Revolution, the state was renamed the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, consisting of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. Neighbours Austria 1918–1938, 1945–1992 Germany Hungary Poland Romania 1918–1938 Soviet Union 1945–1991 Ukraine 1991–1992 Topography The country was of irregular terrain. The western area was part of the north-central European uplands, the eastern region was composed of the northern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains and lands of the Danube River basin. Climate The weather is mild winters and mild summers, influenced by the Atlantic Ocean from the west, Baltic Sea from the north, and Mediterranean Sea from the south. The area was long a part of the Austro Hungarian Empire until the Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the new state was founded by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who served as its first president from 14 November 1918 to 14 December 1935. He was succeeded by his ally, Edvard Beneš. The roots of Czech nationalism go back to the 19th century, nationalism became a mass movement in the last half of the 19th century
8.
Prague Spring
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The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II. The Prague Spring reforms were an attempt by Dubček to grant additional rights to the citizens of Czechoslovakia in an act of partial decentralization of the economy. The freedoms granted included a loosening of restrictions on the media, speech, a large wave of emigration swept the nation. A spirited non-violent resistance was mounted throughout the country, involving attempted fraternization, painting over and turning street signs, defiance of various curfews, etc. While the Soviet military had predicted that it would take four days to subdue the country the resistance held out for eight months, there were sporadic acts of violence and several suicides by self-immolation, but there was no military resistance. Gustáv Husák, who replaced Dubček and also president, reversed almost all of Dubčeks reforms. The Prague Spring inspired music and literature such as the work of Václav Havel, Karel Husa, Karel Kryl, and Milan Kunderas novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The process of de-Stalinization in Czechoslovakia had begun under Antonín Novotný in the late 1950s and early 1960s, following the lead of Nikita Khrushchev, Novotný proclaimed the completion of socialism, and the new constitution, accordingly, adopted the name Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. In the early 1960s, Czechoslovakia underwent an economic downturn, the Soviet model of industrialization applied poorly to Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia was already quite industrialized before World War II and the Soviet model mainly took into account less developed economies, novotnýs attempt at restructuring the economy, the 1965 New Economic Model, spurred increased demand for political reform as well. A few months later, at a party meeting, it was decided that actions against the writers who openly expressed support of reformation would be taken. Since only a part of the union held these beliefs. Dubček replaced Novotný as First Secretary on 5 January 1968, on 22 March 1968, Novotný resigned his presidency and was replaced by Ludvík Svoboda, who later gave consent to the reforms. Early signs of change were few, goldstucker tested the boundaries of Dubček’s devotion to freedom of the press when he appeared on a television interview as the new head of the union. Despite the official government statement that allowed for freedom of the press, goldstucker suffered no repercussions, and Dubček instead began to build a sense of trust among the media, the government, and the citizens. It was under Goldstücker that the name was changed to Literární listy, and on 29 February 1968. By August 1968, Literární listy had a circulation of 300,000, on the 20th anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s Victorious February, Dubček delivered a speech explaining the need for change following the triumph of socialism. Dubček declared the mission was to build an advanced socialist society on sound economic foundations
9.
The Cowards
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The Cowards is a Czech novel by Josef Škvorecký. Written in 1948–49 but not published until 1958, it is a story from the end of the Second World War in Europe. Škvoreckýs prose is mostly narrative and immediate and this is interspersed with introspective passages in which Danny thinks in long sentences of many clauses representing the movement of his mind from one related thought to another. Škvorecký modelled Kostelec on his own town of Náchod. Like Náchod, Kostelec is a town on a river. Like Škvorecký, Smiřický is the educated, middle-class son of a bank clerk, Danny belongs to a jazz and swing band of middle-class young men that plays in a local café and tries to impress the local girls. But everyone knows that Dannys love for the beautiful Irena is unrequited, the novel opens with Kostelec still under German occupation, and ends a week later after the Red Army has liberated the town. The towns German garrison plans to retreat west in the hope of surrendering to the US Army rather than the Soviets, kostelecs Czech civic authorities, who had cooperated with the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia authorities, want to keep the town calm and avoid bloodshed. Somewhere to the east beyond the frontier in German Silesia, Waffen-SS tanks, Danny is motivated not by patriotism or politics but to impress Irena and win her from Zdenek. Škvorecký started the novel a few months after the 1948 Czechoslovak coup détat created the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the novel survived and was republished in Czechoslovakia in 1964,1966 and in the Prague Spring of 1968. When this ended in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Škvorecký, the Cowards was published in English by in the USA by Grove Press in 1970 and in Canada by Škvoreckýs own 68 Publishers in 1972. In the spring and summer of 1968 Škvorecký and the Czech film director Miloš Forman jointly wrote a synopsis to make a film version of The Cowards. After Škvorecký fled the Warsaw Pact invasion the synopsis was translated into English, the original Czech synopsis was lost, but in the 21st century the English translation was translated back into Czech and has been published. In the 1990s the screenwriter Petr Jarchovský wrote a screenplay, the director Bohdan Sláma also had an unrealised project to turn the novel into a film
10.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
11.
Bohumil Hrabal
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Bohumil Hrabal was a Czech writer, regarded by many Czechs as one of the best writers of the 20th century. Hrabal was born in the city of Brno on 28 March 1914, in what was then the province of Moravia within Austria-Hungary, to an unmarried mother, Marie Božena Kiliánová. According to the organisers of a 2009 Hrabal exhibition in Brno, his father was probably Bohumil Blecha, a teachers son a year older than Marie. Marie’s parents opposed the idea of their daughter marrying Blecha, as he was about to serve in the Austro-Hungarian Army, four months after Hrabals birth World War I started, and Blecha was sent to the Italian front, before being invalided out of service. Blecha’s daughter, Drahomíra Blechová-Kalvodová, says her father told her when she was 18 that Hrabal was her half-brother, Bohumil and his biological father never met formally, according to Blechová-Kalvodová. Hrabal and Blechová-Kalvodová met twice, a dedication in a picture from 1994 says, To sister Drahomíra, Hrabal was baptised Bohumil František Kilián. Until the age of three, he lived mainly with his grandparents, Kateřina Kiliánová and Tomáš Kilián, in Brno while his mother worked in Polná as an assistant book-keeper in the towns brewery. František Hrabal, Hrabal’s stepfather, was a friend of Hrabal’s probable biological father, Marie and František married in February 1917, shortly before Bohumils second birthday. Hrabals half-brother, Břetislav Josef Hrabal, was later that year. The family moved in August 1919 to Nymburk, a town on the banks of the Labe. Both of Hrabals parents were active in amateur dramatics, Hrabal’s uncle was Bohuslav Kilián, a lawyer, journalist and publisher of the cultural magazines Salon and Měsíc. In 1920, Hrabal began at the school in Nymburk. In September 1925, he spent one year at a school in Brno. He failed the first year, he attended a technical secondary school in Nymburk. There too he struggled to concentrate on his studies, despite extra classes given to him by his uncle, in June 1934 Hrabal left school with a certificate that said he could be considered for a place at university on a technical course. Hrabal took private classes in Latin for a year, passing the exam in the town of Český Brod with an adequate grade on 3 October 1935. Four days later, on 7 October 1935, he registered at the Charles University in Prague to study for a law degree and he graduated only in March 1946 as Czech universities had been shut down in November 1939 and remained so until the end of Nazi occupation. During the war, he worked as a labourer and dispatcher in Kostomlaty, near Nymburk
12.
Alan Levy
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Alan Levy was an American author. Alan Levy was born in New York City in 1932 and educated at Brown, in 1952 at Brown, he co-wrote an original Brownbrokers musical titled Anything Can Be Fixed with Gill Bach and Porter Woods. In addition, he worked seven years as a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal in Kentucky, later on, he spent seven years in New York as journalist writing for Life magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times and others. Among first personalities he interviewed were W. H. Auden, in 1967, Alan Levy moved to Prague with his family, to collaborate on an American version of a musical by Jiří Šlitr and Jiří Suchý. Shortly after, he covered the Prague Spring and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and chronicled the events in Rowboat to Prague, published in the United States in 1972. Josef and Zdena Skvoreckys Toronto publishing house,68 Publishers, translated the book into Czech in 1975, which has been smuggled to Czechoslovakia and it was republished in 1980 as So Many Heroes and translated into numerous languages. He and his family were expelled from the city in 1971 and they settled in Vienna, Austria, where Alan Levy wrote for the International Herald Tribune, Life, Good Housekeeping, The New York Times Magazine, Cosmopolitan and others. He was also dramaturge of Viennas English Theatre and taught literature, writing, journalism and they returned to Prague in 1990, after the so-called Velvet Revolution. From 1991 on to his death in 2004, he was editor-in-chief of The Prague Post, Levy claims to have coined the phrase Prague, the Left Bank of the 90s in the Posts first issue. The article is said to have attracted thousands of young North Americans to Prague of the 1990s, other sources, however, say that the phrase was already in common usage before Levy quoted it. In 1993 he published The Wiesenthal File, the story of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, the book earned Levy the Author of the Year award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Levy also wrote a play, The World of Ruth Draper, a symphonic requiem by Austrian composer René Staar, performed in November 1998 in Prague by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra at Dvořák Hall in the Rudolfinum. With his wife Valerie, he had two daughters Erika and Monica, Alan Levy chose to become active in our country during what was for us a very sensitive and important period -- the time of creating a free, open environment for the media. Because of his qualities and professional experience, he quickly became recognized as a not inconsiderable figure for whom I had great respect. What is more, I regret him leaving us at a point when a number of Czech media outlets are blurring the limits between serious and tabloid journalism, Václav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic I dreamed only of seeing Prague again before I died. Isolated in Austria by an Iron Curtain, I nonetheless had a premonition that somehow I would die here. It never dawned on me until soon after 1989s Velvet Revolution that first I could live here, the miracle of my life is to awaken every morning in the 21st century – in Prague. We are living in the Left Bank of the 90s, for some of us, Prague is Second Chance City, for others a new frontier where anything goes, everything goes, and, often enough, nothing works
13.
Jaroslav Seifert
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Jaroslav Seifert was a Nobel Prize–winning Czechoslovak writer, poet and journalist. Born in Žižkov, a suburb of Prague in what was part of Austria-Hungary. During the 1920s he was considered a representative of the Czechoslovakian artistic avant-garde. He was one of the founders of the journal Devětsil, in March 1929, he and six other writers left the KSČ after signing a manifesto protesting against Bolshevik tendencies in the new leadership of the party. He subsequently worked as a journalist in the social-democratic and trade union press during the 1930s and 1940s, in 1949 Seifert left journalism and began to devote himself exclusively to literature. His poetry was awarded important state prizes in 1936,1955, and 1968 and he was the official Chairman of the Czechoslovak Writers Union for several years. In 1977 he was one of the signatories of Charter 77 in opposition to the government of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Seifert was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1984. Due to bad health, he was not present at the award ceremony, even though it was a matter of great importance, there was only a brief remark of the award in the state-controlled media. He died in 1986, aged 84, and was buried at the cemetery in Kralupy nad Vltavou. His burial was marked by a presence of secret police. English translation A Wreath of Sonnets, translated by Jan Křesadlo
14.
Nobel Prize in Literature
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Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy, here work refers to an authors work as a whole. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize in any given year, the academy announces the name of the chosen laureate in early October. Although the Nobel Prize in Literature has become the worlds most prestigious literature prize, many authors who have won the prize have fallen into obscurity, while others rejected by the jury remain widely studied and read. The prize has become seen as a political one - a peace prize in literary disguise, whose judges are prejudiced against authors with different political tastes to them. Tim Parks has expressed skepticism that it is possible for Swedish professors, as of 2016,16 of the 113 recipients have been of Scandinavian origin. The Academy has often been alleged to be biased towards European, Nobels vague wording for the criteria for the prize has led to recurrent controversy. In the original Swedish, the word translates as either idealistic or ideal. The Nobel Committees interpretation has varied over the years, in recent years, this means a kind of idealism championing human rights on a broad scale. Though Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets,31 million Swedish kronor, to establish and endow the five Nobel Prizes. Due to the level of surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that the Storting approved it. The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that were to award the Peace Prize were appointed shortly after the will was approved. The prize-awarding organisations followed, the Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, the Nobel Foundation then reached an agreement on guidelines for how the Nobel Prize should be awarded. In 1900, the Nobel Foundations newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II, according to Nobels will, the Royal Swedish Academy was to award the Prize in Literature. Each year, the Swedish Academy sends out requests for nominations of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature and it is not permitted to nominate oneself. Thousands of requests are sent out each year, and as of 2011 about 220 proposals are returned and these proposals must be received by the Academy by 1 February, after which they are examined by the Nobel Committee. By April, the Academy narrows the field to around twenty candidates, by May, a short list of five names is approved by the Committee. The subsequent four months are spent in reading and reviewing the works of the five candidates. In October, members of the Academy vote and the candidate who receives more than half of the votes is named the Nobel laureate in Literature
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Karel Kryl
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The lyrics of Karel Kryls songs are highly poetic and sophisticated, with a frequent use of metaphors and historical allusions. The sparse sounds of an acoustic guitar served to underscore the natural flow of the lyrics themselves. In certain respects—especially the complexity of his lyrics and his accompaniment by a single acoustic guitar—Kryl was similar to a young Bob Dylan, however, unlike Dylan, the Czech singer had a smooth and pure voice, which gave a hauntingly sad quality to his mournful lyrics. Kryl was born on April 12,1944, in Kroměříž and he was the son of Karel Kryl and Marie Šebestová. His father owned a business, which was confiscated from the family in 1948 after the communist takeover. Kryl wanted to be a potter and studied at a secondary school where he specialized in ceramics. Kryl moved to Prague in 1968 as an assistant at Czechoslovak Television, in his spare time he performed his songs in numerous small clubs. When the Warsaw Pact armies occupied Czechoslovakia on August 21,1968, to suppress the Prague Spring reform movement, the title song Bratříčku zavírej vrátka was composed spontaneously on 22.8. 1968 as a reaction to the occupation. The album described his perception of the inhumanity of the regime, the album was released in early 1969 and was banned and removed from shelves shortly after. Kryl left Czechoslovakia in 1969 to attend a festival at Waldeck Castle in West Germany. Faced with certain imprisonment in his homeland, he decided to apply for political asylum and his second album, Rakovina was banned in Czechoslovakia, however, copies were smuggled into the country and circulated widely. Kryl attained a second, German, graduation in 1973 and went on to art history and journalism at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. For the majority of his time in exile, Kryl worked for Radio Free Europe, Kryl went on several tours across Scandinavia, North America and Australia. During this time, he composed not only in his native Czech. In the enthusiastic November days of 1989, during the Velvet Revolution, at first he was thrilled, but he later reportedly became disappointed with the transformation of society. Kryl attacked those who sought to manipulate the Czech and Slovak citizens by nationalist catchphrases and lies about economic transformation, due to the conditions in the country that he considered unbearable, he decided to leave for Germany again. On March 3,1994, just a month before his fiftieth birthday, Karel Kryl died of a heart attack in a Munich hospital
16.
Milan Kundera
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Milan Kundera is a Czech-born French writer who went into exile in France in 1975, and became a naturalised French citizen in 1981. He sees himself as a French writer and insists his work should be studied as French literature, Kunderas best-known work is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Prior to the Velvet Revolution of 1989 the Communist régime in Czechoslovakia banned his books and he lives virtually incognito and rarely speaks to the media. A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he is believed to have been nominated on several occasions, Kundera was born in 1929 at Purkyňova ulice,6 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, to a middle-class family. His father, Ludvík Kundera was an important Czech musicologist and pianist who served as the head of the Janáček Music Academy in Brno from 1948 to 1961, Milan learned to play the piano from his father, he later studied musicology and musical composition. Musicological influences and references can be throughout his work, he has even included musical notation in the text to make a point. Kundera is a cousin of Czech writer and translator Ludvík Kundera and he belonged to the generation of young Czechs who had had little or no experience of the pre-war democratic Czechoslovak Republic. Their ideology was influenced by the experiences of World War II. Still in his teens, he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia which seized power in 1948 and he completed his secondary school studies in Brno at Gymnázium třída Kapitána Jaroše in 1948. He studied literature and aesthetics at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague, after two terms, he transferred to the Film Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague where he first attended lectures in film direction and script writing. In 1950, his studies were interrupted by political interferences. He and writer Jan Trefulka were expelled from the party for anti-party activities, Trefulka described the incident in his novella Pršelo jim štěstí. Kundera also used the incident as an inspiration for the theme of his novel Žert. After Kundera graduated in 1952, the Film Faculty appointed him a lecturer in world literature, in 1956 Milan Kundera was readmitted into the Party. He was expelled for the time in 1970. Kundera, along with other reform communist writers such as Pavel Kohout, was involved in the 1968 Prague Spring. This brief period of reformist activities was crushed by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, finally, however, Kundera relinquished his reformist dreams and moved to France in 1975. He taught for a few years in the University of Rennes and he was stripped of Czechoslovak citizenship in 1979, he has been a French citizen since 1981
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a 1984 novel by Milan Kundera, about two women, two men, a dog and their lives in the 1968 Prague Spring period of Czechoslovak history. Although written in 1982, this novel was not published until two years later, in a French translation, the original Czech text was published the following year. The Unbearable Lightness of Being takes place mainly in Prague in the late 1960s, Tomáš, A Czech surgeon and intellectual. Tomáš is a womanizer who lives for his work and he considers sex and love to be distinct entities, he has sex with many women but loves only his wife, Tereza. He sees no contradiction between two positions. He explains womanizing as an imperative to explore female idiosyncrasies only expressed during sex, at first he views his wife as a burden whom he is obliged to take care of. After the Russian invasion, they escape to Zurich, where he starts womanizing again, Tereza, homesick, returns to Prague with the dog. He quickly realizes he wants to be with her and follows her home and he has to deal with the consequences of a letter to the editor in which he metaphorically likened the Czech Communists to Oedipus. Eventually fed up with life in Prague under the Communist regime and he abandons his twin obsessions of work and womanizing and discovers true happiness with Tereza. His epitaph, written by his Catholic son, is He Wanted the Kingdom of God on Earth, a gentle, intellectual photographer, she delves into dangerous and dissident photojournalism during the Soviet occupation of Prague. Tereza does not condemn Tomáš for his infidelities, instead characterizing herself as a weaker person, Tereza is mostly defined by her view of the body as disgusting and shameful, due to her mothers embrace of the bodys grotesque functions. Throughout the book she fears simply being another body in Tomášs array of women, once Tomáš and Tereza move to the countryside, she devotes herself to raising cattle and reading. Sabina, Tomášs mistress and closest friend, Sabina lives her life as an extreme example of lightness, taking profound satisfaction in the act of betrayal. She declares war on kitsch and struggles against the constraints imposed by her puritan ancestry and this struggle is shown through her paintings. Later in the novel she begins to correspond with Šimon while living under the roof of some older Americans who admire her artistic skill, franz, Sabinas lover and a Geneva professor and idealist. Franz falls in love with Sabina, whom he considers a liberal and he is a kind and compassionate man. As one of the dreamers, he bases his actions on loyalty to the memories of his mother. In Bangkok after the march, he is wounded during a mugging
