Eva Kantůrková

Kantůrková was born in Prague in 1930. Influenced by her communist father, she became involved in the communist youth movement, but the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 caused her to reject the communist agenda.[1] In 1970, she quit the communist party and joined the Czech dissident movement; she was blacklisted as a writer, her completed novels were removed from library shelves, and two screenplays she was developing were put on hiatus. Together with many prominent Czech writers and cultural figures, she signed the Charter 77 manifesto and, in 1979, she published We Have Met in this Book, a collection of interviews with Czech women dissidents. The publication of this book abroad led to her arrest on 5 June 1981. She was charged with "subversion" and held without trial for ten months.[2] The experience inspired her 1984 novel My Companions in the Bleak House.[1]

Kantůrková garnered success as a writer with the 1967 publication of her first novel, The Funeral, which explored the death of a farmer caused by communist collectivization in the 1950s. From the late 1970s to the 90s, she wrote two collections of short stories and a trilogy of novels centering on political disappointment and disillusionment. Her other writing from the period, the novel The Master in the Tower and a historical work on Jan Hus, focused on the struggle between communism and Christianity. Kantůrková has continued to publish her memoirs and diaries, including the 1999 and 2000 diaries that she wrote in an effort to cope with her husband's death.[1]

After the Velvet Revolution, Kantůrková served as president of the Czech Writer's Union and was a staff member in the Ministry of Culture. Zdenek Sirový's film Funeral Ceremonies, which was based on her novel, was released in 1990 after being banned for 20 years.[1]