Czechast, Radio Prague International

Three years after the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel and the beginning of the devastating war in Gaza, Czechast turns to two Palestinian voices with longstanding ties to Czechia. Anthropologist Yasara Abu Ghosh and editor and translator Lamis Bartušková Khalilová reflect on their personal histories, their complex identities and their disappointment with Czech political and media responses to Palestinian suffering. Their conversations complement earlier Czechast interviews exploring Jewish perspectives on the conflict.

Czech literature will be in the international spotlight next week when Czechia becomes Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest publishing trade fair. Seventy-five Czech authors are heading to Frankfurt for the event, which runs from October 7 to 11 under the motto “ Czechia: A Country on the Coast .” Against that backdrop, Czechast speaks to Belgian intellectual-property lawyer and passionate reader Bart van Besien, whose Bookmarked Places project explores countries through their literature – and whose journey through Czech books has taken him from Bohumil Hrabal and Jiří Weil to contemporary writer Marek Šindelka.

Václav Havel, playwright, dissident and the first president of the Czech Republic, would have turned 90 on October 5. In this edition of Czechast, former Charter 77 activist Jan Urban remembers first meeting him in the final years of communist rule – and reflects on the qualities that made Havel such an extraordinary figure within the dissident movement.

Linda Zeilina-Cross first came to Prague in 2017 and eventually chose the Czech capital as the base for her International Sustainable Finance Centre. She tells Czechast that Czech scepticism towards new ideas can be frustrating, but also sees a country whose clean-tech sector is stronger than many Czechs realise. Recent political changes concern her, but she believes economic forces driving the transformation will be difficult to reverse.

What does it mean to be Jewish and Czech after October 7, 2023, and the devastating war that followed in Gaza? At Brno’s Štetl Fest, Czechast spoke to historian Anna Hájková (University of Warwick) and Israel expert Irena Kalhousová (Charles University) about antisemitism, Israel, the political left and the peculiar position of Jews in Czech society.

More than 35 years after the fall of communism, how close is the Czech Republic to the free society and free-market economy envisioned in the early 1990s? In this episode of Czechast, former Czech president and prime minister Václav Klaus argues that much of Europe is now moving in the opposite direction. Speaking to Vít Pohanka, he discusses the European Union, the euro, the war in Ukraine and the political forces challenging Europe’s mainstream.

Karen Kruger grew up in the United States unaware that her mother was Jewish and had escaped Czechoslovakia on a Kindertransport. Discovering that secret set the Holocaust educator and filmmaker on a decades-long search that resulted in Letters from Brno and repeated journeys to South Moravia. Speaking to Czechast during ŠTETL FEST, Kruger explains how confronting a painful family history gradually turned into an unexpected sense of belonging.

Václav Klaus is known internationally as a politician who has never shied away from controversy, from questioning policies designed to fight climate change to his views on Russia’s war against Ukraine. But this episode of Czechast reveals a more personal side of the former Czech president: Václav Klaus the Pražák. Born and raised in Vinohrady, he looks back on more than eight decades of life in a changing Prague – and has some typically strong opinions about the city of today.

Prague is already feeling the effects of a warming climate, particularly during increasingly intense summer heat waves. Jan Richter, a climate change adaptation specialist at Prague City Hall, believes the answer lies partly beneath our feet: giving trees enough underground space, retaining rainwater and bringing more vegetation into even the historic centre. In this episode of Czechast, he also explains how a Fulbright scholarship in the United States and the urban farms of Detroit helped shape his ideas about the resilient city of the future.

For centuries, paintings, monuments and public buildings have shaped the way Czechs understand their past. According to art historian and Charles University Professor Vít Vlnas, works of art often tell us less about the historical events they portray than about the period in which they were created. In an interview for Czechast, he reflects on Baroque art, Charles Bridge, collective memory and why modern generations are beginning to see Czech history differently.