SOURCE: Day, Barbara. “Small War in Absurdistan.” Spectator 263, no. 8407 (26 August 1989): 28.

In the following essay, Day reports on the cultural battles being fought on the Czech stage by numerous “silenced” authors, including—through a stage production of I Served the King of England—Hrabal.

‘Absurdistan’ is the name many Czechs give to their own country today. For years it has been commonplace to say that the Theatre of the Absurd we know in the West is in Eastern Europe a depiction of everyday life; in Prague nowadays, a fresh layer of dramatic irony is unfolded at every première.

In early spring, the Czech authorities sentenced to prison their most famous playwright, Václav Havel, for the crime of laying flowers on a memorial. Then, for the first time for 20 years, a small but stubborn nucleus of theatre performers was joined by two to three thousand colleagues—actors, directors...