SOURCE: Sherwood, Peter. “A Czech Intellectual.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4935 (31 October 1997): 26.

In the following review, Sherwood offers a negative assessment of The Ultimate Intimacy, commenting that the novel overindulges in “simplistic nostalgia.”

The latest in a long line of serious Klíma professionals, Daniel Vedra is a Protestant pastor with the familiar melancholy air and ascetic strain, whose journey through the past twenty years of Czech(oslovak) history The Ultimate Intimacy strives to show as a Calvary of the decent Czech intellectual. The stations of his cross have the definitive articles of his faith: the Charter (1977), the Revolution (Velvet, 1989) and the Restitution (of property, in the 1990s). He is, in turn, harried, hailed and finally handed back a handsome house; so that, for the duration of the novel, money is not the issue. Vedra has a small but loyal flock and dispenses the word and good deeds, relying...