TO JOSEF SKVORECKY

Skvorecky kept Greene informed about the literary scene in Czechoslovakia and about individual writers such as Ladislav Fuks (1923–94). He often included in his letters grimly amusing anecdotes, including the story of Comrade Balasova, the director of Prague television, who enforced a strict dress-code which, among other things, required women employees to be checked for bras.

15 October 1973

Dear Skvorecky,

[…]

As usual your descriptions of the literary scene in your poor country fill me with a mixture of amusement and despair. I particularly like the story of the horse Fuks. Considering the situation I was rather surprised to receive a letter from my publisher Vysehrad asking whether they could publish The Honorary Consul on the same terms as they had published Travels with My Aunt. I said yes. Am I still regarded as a safe author in Czechoslovakia? I also received a letter from my Russian translator of the past saying that now Russia had joined the Berne Convention could he get the publishers to approach me about the new novel, and I replied that I had already made my situation clear and this was not altered by any adhesion to the Berne Convention. As long as the situation of the dissident writers in Russia remained what it was I was not going to sign any contract for any book to be published in Russia. Am I wrong not to take up a similar attitude with Czechoslovakia? Other so-called democratic republics continue to publish my books – Rumania and Poland. I’ve done nothing in the case of Czechoslovakia because one feels that all the governments are acting under the tutelage of Big Brother, and it’s only Big Brother that one should take the firm line with. I would like your opinion about all this.

Your description of Comrade Balasova amused me enormously. I wish you would allow me to write that I had received the story from a friend in Czechoslovakia and send it to The Times, naturally with quotation marks. Perhaps however this would somehow get back to its source. I do think that farce is the best way of attacking these people.⁴⁵

I liked Allende very much and I liked the type of communists who were around him who belong much more to the school of Dubcek than to Moscow, and I was horrified but not surprised by the putsch.⁴⁶It’s an odd thing to be able to say that about two years ago one was at a lunch party – not a very big lunch party – of men only, of whom three have now died by violence. This was in Santiago and the dead men are Allende, his naval attaché Captain Araya⁴⁷and his Minister of Finance at that moment Vuskovic⁴⁸with whom I visited one of the taken-over factories and whom I liked very much. Another member of the lunch party is now in exile in France and two others I have no news of and may have been executed. The Chile affair was horribly efficient and far more murderous than the Prague putsch. But perhaps in the long run it was less corrupting. If there is anything I can do for your friend from Chile do let me know – not that I have influence with anyone on the right or the left.

Yours ever,
Graham Greene

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