Occasional Papers
Fictions and Histories
Czech writer Ivan Klima investigates the connections between fiction and history: how these seemingly different areas of inquiry bleed into one another, especially in times of political turmoil. Fiction can be informed by history, and history can be made fictional, when subjected to the influence of writers constrained by repressive government, governments or individuals working to justify regimes, or poets seeking to stretch the boundaries of what it is possible to speak. The main paper is followed by a discussion of Ivan Klima with Michael Heim, Czeslaw Milosz, and Martina Moravcova of literature in post-Communist Central Europe, and a vignette written by Klima about his residency in Berkeley.
Authors
Robert Alter
Kwame A. Appiah
T. J. Clark
J.M. Coetzee
Arthur Danto
Mike Davis
Natalie Zemon Davis
Wendy Doniger
Gerald Early
Christina Gillis, ed.
Anthony Grafton
Seamus Heaney
Eva Hoffman
Michael Ignatieff
Stephen Katz
Bert Keizer
Ivan Klima
Maya Lin
Alan Liu
Margaret Lock
Kenzaburô Ôe
Robert Pinsky
Michael Pollan
Sebastião Salgado
Peter Sellars
Maurice Sendak
Kathleen Woodward