Havel's first professional satirical works available in shops

Prague, Oct 31 (CTK) - A book of Vaclav Havel's first professional satirical texts that he wrote for a revue performance half a century ago has appeared in Czech bookshops, issued by the Galen publishing house on the occasion of Havel's recent birthday.

Havel, a playwright, former leading Czechoslovak anti-communist dissident and first post-communist president, turned 75 on October 5.

The book, titled Motomorfoza, includes Havel's short satirical texts Motomorfoza and Ela, Hela a stop, that were to be a part of Autostop, a revue performance staged by writer Ivan Vyskocil.

Although the texts finally were not staged, the former was included in a now forgotten book in 1963 and the latter was uncovered only in 2009, Lenka Prihonska, from Galen, has told CTK.

"I feel moved by seeing the book published, since Autostop was the first text of which I was a co-author and which was performed on the stage," Havel said.

Havel started writing plays in the late 1950s. He attracted the audience's attention by his very first play that appeared on the stage, the Garden Party (1963) and later also by his other absurd plays staged in his "mother" theatre, Divadlo Na zabradli in Prague.

After the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia he was sacked from the theatre and banned as an author. As a dissident writer, he wrote another 12 plays until the late 1989 anti-communist "Velvet Revolution" that catapulted him to the post of president.

He wrote his last play, Leaving, in 2008, five years after his presidential mandate expired.