Havel is considered by may to be one of the best Czech writers there are around today. Yet, as a president, he is harshly criticized.; It is interesting to speculate whether Vaclav is a better writer or a better president.

Vaclav Havel was born in Prague on October 5, 1936. In 1951 he completed his compulsory schooling. Being the offspring of a prominent Prague businessman's family, he was barred from pursuing regular studies afterwards. For four years, while taking an apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory technician, he was attending evening classes at a grammar school. It was at the age of nineteen that he started publishing studies and articles in literary and theatre magazines. Family tradition has led him tow

Contemporary Literary Criticism. "Vaclav Havel". vol. 58.

In 1996, Vaclav's first wife, Olga Havlova, died after a long illness. On January 4, 1997 Vaclav Havel married the popular actress Dagmar Veskrnova.

After completing his military service, he worked as a stagehand at the ABC Theatre and later, from 1960, in the Theatre on the Balustrade. The Theatre on the Balustrade produced his first plays, most importantly The Garden Party (1963), a piece representing in an outstanding manner the strong liberal tendencies that were occurring in Czech culture, society, and government in the 1960's which culminated in the Prague Spring of 1968. At that time Vaclav was taking part in public and cultural life as one of the champions of democracy in Czechoslovakia. In the second half of the '60's, his next plays, The Memorandum (1965) and The Increased Difficulty of Concentration (1968), was performed. After the invasion of Prague in August 1968 by Soviet troops, which put an end to the Prague Spring regeneration process, Vaclav Havel did not abandon his convictions. Consequently, a lasting ban was imposed on publication of his plays in Czechoslovakia (Kriseova, ps.13-14).

After his resignation, he left public life for two months. In September 1992, he agreed with the government's suggestion that first, the President is to be elected by both chambers of Parliament; second, the President cannot be recalled by Parliament and third, the President has the right to dissolve Parliament. In January 1994 Havel became the first President of the Czech Republic after the split with the Slovak Republic (Kriseova, p.251).

His resistance to the Communist regime, which included co-founding the human rights organization Charter 77, resulted in several arrests in the '70's. In prison he wrote letters to his wife Olga (now deceased). These letters were collected in a book published in 1988, Letters to Olga: June 1979--September 1982. The letters contain meditations on theatre, politics, literature, and art, as well as, instructions of domestic duties and complaints about his hemorrhoids (CLC, Scammel, vol. 58, p. 240).

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