Alan Levy was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

.

Alan Levy was born in New York City in 1932 and educated at Brown

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

 and Columbia

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 universities. In 1952 at Brown, he co-wrote an original Brownbrokers

Brownbrokers

Brownbrokers is a student-run theater group at Brown University. Together with Brown's Theatre Arts and Performance Studies faculty, Brownbrokers develops and produces a full-length, student-written musical biyearly...

 musical titled Anything Can Be Fixed with Gill Bach and Porter Woods. In addition, he worked seven years as a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal in Kentucky

Kentucky

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

. Later on, he spent seven years in New York as journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 writing for Life

Life (magazine)

Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....

magazine, The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...

, The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

and others. Among first personalities he interviewed were W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

, the Beatles

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

, Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...

, Graham Greene

Graham Greene

Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...

, Václav Havel

Václav Havel

Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...

, Sophia Loren

Sophia Loren

Sophia Loren, OMRI is an Italian actress.In 1962, Loren won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women, along with 21 awards, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance...

, Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...

, Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

 and Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

.

In 1967, Alan Levy moved to Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

 with his family, to collaborate on an American version of a musical by Jiří Šlitr

Jiří Šlitr

Jiří Šlitr was a Czech songwriter, pianist, singer, actor and painter. Together with Jiří Suchý he significantly influenced Czech pop music and theatre in the 1960s.- Biography :...

 and Jiří Suchý

Jirí Suchý

Jiří Suchý is a Czech film actor, writer and stage actor. He also writes music. Currently he is the owner of the theatre Semafor in Prague where he has performed for many years and helped establish in 1959.-References:...

.

Shortly after, he covered the Prague Spring

Prague Spring

The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...

 and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact

Warsaw Pact

The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...

 invasion of Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

 in 1968 and chronicled the events in Rowboat to Prague, published in the United States in 1972. Josef

Josef Škvorecký

Josef Škvorecký, CM is a leading contemporary Czech writer and publisher who has spent much of his life in Canada. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country...

 and Zdena Skvoreckys' Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

 publishing house, 68 Publishers

68 Publishers

68 Publishers, also called Sixty-Eight Publishers, Sixtyeight Publishers, or even Nakladatelství 68 , was a publishing house formed in Toronto in 1971 by Czech expatriate Josef Škvorecký and his wife Zdena Salivarová...

, translated the book into Czech in 1975, which has been smuggled to Czechoslovakia, where it became one of the underground classics. It was republished in 1980 as So Many Heroes and translated into numerous languages.

He and his family were expelled from the city in 1971. They settled in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, where Alan Levy wrote for the International Herald Tribune

International Herald Tribune

The International Herald Tribune is a widely read English language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 38 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 160 countries and territories...

, Life

Life (magazine)

Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....

, Good Housekeeping

Good Housekeeping

Good Housekeeping is a women's magazine owned by the Hearst Corporation, featuring articles about women's interests, product testing by The Good Housekeeping Institute, recipes, diet, health as well as literary articles. It is well known for the "Good Housekeeping Seal," popularly known as the...

, The New York Times Magazine

The New York Times Magazine

The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...

, Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan (magazine)

Cosmopolitan is an international magazine for women. It was first published in 1886 in the United States as a family magazine, was later transformed into a literary magazine and eventually became a women's magazine in the late 1960s...

and others. He was also dramaturge of Vienna's English Theatre and taught literature, writing, journalism and drama.

They returned to Prague in 1990, after the so called "Velvet Revolution

Velvet Revolution

The Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that took place from November 17 – December 29, 1989...

". From 1991 on to his death in 2004, he was editor-in-chief of The Prague Post

The Prague Post

The Prague Post is an English language weekly newspaper covering the Czech Republic and Central and Eastern Europe.It is the only English-language newspaper in the Czech Republic...

. Levy claims to have coined the phrase "Prague, the Left Bank of the '90s" in the Post's first issue. The article is said to have attracted thousands of young North Americans to Prague of the 1990s. Other sources, however, say that the phrase was already in common usage before Levy quoted it.

In 1993 he published The Wiesenthal File, the story of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal

Simon Wiesenthal

Simon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter....

. The book earned Levy the Author of the Year award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors

American Society of Journalists and Authors

The American Society of Journalists and Authors was founded in 1948 as the Society of Magazine Writers, and is an organization of independent nonfiction writers in the United States...

. Levy also wrote a play, The World of Ruth Draper, and wrote the libretto for Just an Accident?, a symphonic requiem by Austrian composer René Staar, performed in November 1998 in Prague by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra

Czech National Symphony Orchestra

Czech National Symphony Orchestra is a symphony orchestra in Prague in the Czech Republic. It was established in 1993 by trumpet player Jan Hasenöhrl...

 at Dvořák

Antonín Dvorák

Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...

 Hall in the Rudolfinum

Rudolfinum

The Rudolfinum is a music auditorium in Prague, Czech Republic. It is designed in the neo-renaissance style and is situated on Jan Palach Square on the bank of the river Vltava.-Overview:...

.

With his wife Valerie, he had two daughters Erika and Monica.

Remembering Alan Levy

“Alan Levy chose to become active in our country during what was for us a very sensitive and important period -- the time of creating a free, open environment for the media. Because of his human qualities and professional experience, he quickly became recognized as a not inconsiderable figure for whom I had great respect. What is more, I regret him leaving us at a point when a number of Czech media outlets are blurring the limits between serious and tabloid journalism.”

Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic

Quotes

• "I dreamed only of seeing Prague again before I died. Isolated in Austria by an Iron Curtain ... I nonetheless had a premonition that somehow I would die here. It never dawned on me until soon after 1989's Velvet Revolution that first I could live here."

• "The miracle of my life is to awaken every morning in the 21st century – in Prague."

• "We are living in the Left Bank of the '90s. For some of us, Prague is Second Chance City; for others a new frontier where anything goes, everything goes, and, often enough, nothing works. Yesterday is long gone, today is nebulous, and who knows about tomorrow, but, somewhere within each of us, we all know that we are living in a historic place at a historic time."
  –in The Prague Post, October 1, 1991 (first issue)

• "A rex-pat is a returning expatriate
  Expatriate
  An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
  
  , an ex-pat
  Expatriate
  An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
  
   has been here, goes home to America, takes a job, maybe goes to law school, maybe does well in America but can't get Prague out of his or her blood and returns to Prague to live again."
  –in the film Rex-patriates, 2004

External links

• Top Post editor Levy dies at age 72 – by Mark Nessmith, The Prague Post, April 8, 2004
• Alan Levy – A Personal Reflection – by Lisa L. Frankenberg, The Prague Post, April 8, 2004