A Pebble in the Torrent
Published on 22. May 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
398 pages
978-1-909740-66-2 (ISBN)
Description
Starting out as a struggling, aspiring writer, Jan Vitek would go on to play a secret role in undermining the Czech communist party from within, a mission that would result in the kidnap of his wife and child and his own exile in Switzerland. He has battled political regimes and devastating illness with the same refined humility during a life marked equally by triumph and tragedy.
Born in South Bohemia and coming of age during the Second World War, Vitek witnessed the liberation of the Czechoslovakia in 1945, the subsequent Communist takeover and the unbridled Capitalist transformation that many of the ex-communist states experienced following the revolutions of the late 1980s. His own life has been played out against a dramatic backdrop of a Europe in flux and his accounts of both his own experiences and this sweeping social change is illuminating.
A Pebble in the Torrent is Jan Vitek's captivating and dramatic story of a man who said no to oppression and injustice.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
477 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-909740-66-2 (9781909740662)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
At a time when it was almost unthinkable to do so, Jan Vitek, 1928, took a stand against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia; his courageous engagement would leave an indelible mark on the rest of his life. Expelled from Prague University for demonstrating against the 1948 communist takeover, Vitek was forced into hiding, adopting a new identity as a means of avoiding arrest. Under this new persona, he joined the army, where he would meet a powerful and significant ally, Lieutenant General Václav Prchlík, a man who would become his mentor and protector. Prchlík, a fellow dissident, enables Vitek to assume a career as a journalist. He would later earn a position in the International Labour Organization in Geneva. After Soviet invasion of his home country, Czechoslovakia, he chooses exile in Switzerland. Besides being a prolific publicist, Vitek published half a dozen books and hundreds of short stories in Czech and one novel in English, A Pebble in the Torrent (2013).