SOURCE: "Living in Lies: Václav Havel's Drama," in Cross Currents, Vol. 42, No. 2, Summer 1990, pp. 200-11.

Carey places Havel's drama in three major phases: "the early absurdist comedies; the Vaněk morality plays; and the psychological-prison plays."

Americans were captivated by the 1989 election of Vaclav Havel, a human rights activist who spent almost four years in prison, as the first president of post-communist Czechoslovakia. Many who had heard that his ideas had played a vital role in the country's "Velvet Revolution" were introduced to his thinking through interviews, partic ularly the extended dialogue in Disturbing the Peace, as well as occasional pieces in the New York Review of Books. They learned even more from the philosophical-political essays of Living in Truth, and from Letters to Olga, the collection of fascinating, philosophical letters Havel wrote to his wife while he was in prison. Havel's political writings emphasize, among a...