Vaclav Havel

Vaclav Havel was a Czech playwright, essayist and dissident who became a statesman, serving as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992 and then as the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. Before his political career he was a leading figure of Czechoslovak absurdist theatre, writing plays such as The Garden Party and The Memorandum that used the empty language of bureaucracy to satirize totalitarian rule, work that led to his plays being banned and to his own repeated imprisonment after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion. He remains known internationally for his plays, essays and memoirs as much as for his presidency.