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“... oneself of evil and to atone for guilt conceals within it the risk of new crimes and new wrongs. Ivan Klima must have written that passage in about 1985. Judge on Trial was finished three years before the revolution of November 1989. But today the theme of those two paragraphs is at the centre of Czech and Slovak consciences. This is the moral crisis ...”

“... and love, and the roads and side-roads which join them together, are concerns of Kundera and Klima, whose name is a further concern of Kundera’s, and is used for the uxorious philanderer of his novel The Farewell Party. With the arrival of these two Czech writers Central Europe’s roman à K has taken a new turn. There is a sense in which the hero of ...”

“... A parable, says the OED, is ‘a fictitious narrative (usually about something that might naturally occur), by which moral or spiritual relations are typically set forth’. Klíma’s new novel fits the description exactly. There are three main characters, who take it in turns to tell the story and do a lot of thinking about ‘moral or spiritual relations’, each in his or her own voice and idiom ...”

“... of a profit-society in which everyone, even among the winners, ends up losing. The Czech novelist Ivan Klima’s 1972 novel A Summer Affair has yet to see the light of day in its country of origin. Not that we’re dealing in red-hot political exposé here: the novel is exactly what its title suggests, depicting a brief, intense and bitter affair between ...”

“... Klima’s fine, disconsolate novel is scarcely the cliché its blurb makes it out – ‘a moving account of the fate of the dissident artist under an oppressive regime’ – because Klima’s reason for joining a team of Prague street-sweepers is not exactly that he has been forced to do it by the state ...”

“... away for further questioning, hopping a passing trolley for his getaway. When the police browbeat Ivan Klíma to discover what Roth was doing in Czechoslovakia, Klíma replied: ‘Don’t you read his books? He’s here for the girls.’Ah, yes, the girls. It keeps coming back to the girls. No matter how loftily we may wish to elevate our sights and vouch ...”