Since the Soviet occupation of 1968 censorship has closed the curtain on free expression in Czechoslovakia. But plays continue to be circulated in typescript within the country, are regularly smuggled out for publication abroad, and continue to be produced without restriction in the West. This book is the first full-length study of Czechoslovak drama of the sixties and seventies. The author discusses the works of major playwrights, including Vaclav Havel, Pavel Kohout, and Josef Topol; and the influence of the great Czech writers Kafka and Hasek as well as Western writers such as Beckett, Sartre, and Albee. Czech and Slovak playwrights have responded in a distinctive, courageous, and often very funny manner to a political situation perhaps best labelled 'absurd.' The author depicts movingly their portrait of the horror-and the unintended humour-of life in a rigidly bureaucratic society, a theme of universal interest. The Silenced Theatre is the only detailed study of this dynamic and modern national theatre. This book will help to preserve Czech drama and create an awareness of its important role in Western literaturea role it continues to play even in exile from its homeland.

The full range of literary traditions comes to life in the Twayne Critical Essays Series. Volume editors have carefully selected critical essays that represent the full spectrum of controversies, trends and methodologies relating to each author's work. Essays include writings from the author's native country and abroad, with interpretations from the time they were writing, through the present day.

Each volume includes:

-- An introduction providing the reader with a lucid overview of criticism from its beginnings -- illuminating controversies, evaluating approaches and sorting out the schools of thought

-- The most influential reviews and the best reprinted scholarly essays

-- A section devoted exclusively to reviews and reactions by the subject's contemporaries

-- Original essays, new translations and revisions commissioned especially for the series

-- Previously unpublished materials such as interviews, lost letters and manuscript fragments

-- A bibliography of the subject's writings and interviews

-- A name and subject index