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The Rolling Stones visit Vaclav Havel in Prague Castle in 1990. Photograph: Corbis
The Rolling Stones visit Vaclav Havel in Prague Castle in 1990. Photograph: Corbis

Book reviews roundup: Havel: A Life, Everything I Never Told You, The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World

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What the critics thought of Michael Žantovský’s Havel: A Life, Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You and George Prochnik’s The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World

Václav Havel’s career is without compare among those who came to eminence in the last years of communism: playwright, philosopher, dissident, political prisoner and finally president of his country, he combined in his person the greatness of a national saviour with the cheek of a clown.” Roger Scruton in the Times, for whom the Czech leader was clearly a hero, was impressed by Havel: A Life by Michael Žantovský – the author “tells the story with a great flair for detail, almost as though he had stood at Havel’s shoulder, taking notes … Thanks to Žantovský’s truthfulness, Havel emerges from this account as a great national leader whose greatness was inseparable from real humility and grace.” Victor Sebestyen in the Spectator pointed out that Žantovský, “the Czech ambassador to Britain, was Havel’s friend and press spokesman during his first years as president … Žantovský was an elegant writer before he turned diplomat and this is a clear-eyed portrait that never descends into gush or hagiography.” Žantovský’s account of the velvet revolution is “masterly” and he is “brilliant on personal snippets”. “We have the last word on Havel’s true musical tastes – he wasn’t the president of rock’n’roll; he liked easy listening. Havel does not emerge as a saint. Žantovský lists innumerable affairs, one-night stands and drunken binges … As president, he made a fatal mistake: he stayed on the stage too long.”

As Fiona Wilson in the Times recounted, Celeste Ng, American author of the “literary thriller” Everything I Never Told You, which begins with the disappearance and death of teenaged Lydia, “has crash-landed into the literary spotlight … after her first novel was named Amazon’s book of the year, pipping Hilary Mantel and Stephen King … no sudden realisations, but the gradual peeling back of the layers is no less compelling as we crawl towards the inevitable conclusion in Ng’s portrait of a brittle family and the burden of difference.” The New York Times’s verdict, given by Alexander Chee, was that it’s “a deep, heartfelt portrait of a family struggling with its place in history, and a young woman hoping to be the fulfilment of that struggle”.

There have been several admiring reviews for George Prochnik’s The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World. According to Oliver Kamm in the Times, the book “is more than an invaluable account of a remarkable writer and his tortured soul. It is a major work of historical and cultural criticism of Europe’s darkest times … Zweig’s haunted talent has never been better explored than in this exemplary study, which should lead new readers to an unjustly neglected literary master.” The Sunday Times’s John Carey hailed a “sensitive and enthralling” study: “Surprisingly, in view of its grim subject, Prochnik’s book is a joy to read, and that is simply down to the quality of his writing. Often it is more like reading a novel, or a poem, than a biography. Sometimes Prochnik lifts and translates phrases from Zweig’s letters – Manhattan’s skyscrapers like “stone icebergs”, for example – but more usually he supplies the poetic charge himself, with occasional baroque flourishes. The Impossible Exile says little about Zweig as a writer but, more than any book of literary criticism could, it takes you into the world from which his writing sprang.” Frances Wilson in the Daily Telegraph generally agreed: “The book has the essayistic virtues of brevity, personality and a relaxed gait … It is impossible to read The Impossible Exile without wanting to spend more time in Zweig’s company”.

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