Karel Hvížd̕ala

Karel Hvížďala (1941) is a journalist and essayist. He has published more than thirty books of interviews – with such prominent figures as Karel Schwarzenberg and Jacques Rupnik – and is widely considered the master of the genre in Czech. His book-length interview with Václav Havel, conducted while Hvížďala was living in exile in West Germany, was published in Czech and German in 1986 and 1987; in 1990 Knopf published the English translation as Disturbing the Peace; it was later published in paperback by Vintage. Hvížďala has also written twenty radio plays, five novels, five books on the media, and two memoirs.