Ladislav Mňačko was a Slovak writer and journalist. He took part in the partisan movement in Slovakia during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. After the war, he was at first a staunch supporter of the Czechoslovak Communist regime and one of its most prominent journalists. However, being disillusioned, he became the regime's vocal critic, for which he was persecuted and censored. In the autumn of 1967 he went to Israel as a protest against the Czechoslovak stance during the Six-Day War

Six-Day War

The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...

, but returned to Czechoslovakia soon afterwards.

After the occupation of Czechoslovakia

Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia

On the night of 20–21 August 1968, the Soviet Union and her main satellite states in the Warsaw Pact – Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic , Hungary and Poland – invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in order to halt Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring political liberalization...

 in August 1968 he emigrated again, this time to 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...

, only to return to Czechoslovakia after the fall of the regime in 1989. After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia

Dissolution of Czechoslovakia

The dissolution of Czechoslovakia, which took effect on 1 January 1993, was an event that saw the self-determined separation of the federal state of Czechoslovakia. The Czech Republic and Slovakia, entities which had arisen in 1969 within the framework of Czechoslovak federalisation, became...

 in 1993, he lived in Prague and died in Bratislava in 1994.

Mňačko is one of the few Slovak writers of the 1950s and 1960s who were translated into the English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

.

Selected works

• Smrť sa volá Engelchen (Death Is Called Engelchen), 1959. Translated into English by George Theiner in 1963. Filmed by Ján Kadár
  Ján Kadár
  Ján Kadár was a Slovak film writer and director. As a filmmaker, he worked in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the United States, and Canada. Most of his films were directed in tandem with Elmar Klos. The two became best known for their Oscar-winning The Shop on Main Street...
  
  in 1963 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057513/.
• Oneskorené reportáže (Delayed Reportages), 1963
• Ako chutí moc (The Taste of Power), 1967. Translated into English by Paul Stevenson in 1967.
• Siedma noc (The Seventh Night), 1968. Translated into English in 1969.

External Links

• Literárne informačné centrum (LIC): Ladislav Mňačko Biography on litcentrum.sk (slovak)