Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

by Ivan Klíma, Paul E. Wilson (translator)

Ivan Klima was in the United States when Russian tanks entered Prague in 1968 but, against the advice of friends, he returned home. He became a dissident, writing books (never published) that were invariably inspired by Czechoslovakia's repressive regime. But what happens to a rebel artist when there is nothing left to rebel against? This question informs Klima's powerful novel, "Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light," which describes life before, during, and after the Velvet Revolution of 1989. It is the story of Pavel, a middle-aged television cameraman working uneasily within the boundaries set by the regime, who dreams of one day making a film—a searing portrait of his times—that the authorities will never allow. But after the collapse of communism, Pavel finds he is unprepared for this new world of unlimited freedoms. He never quite gets around to making that film; his time is taken up instead with lucrative small jobs—a TV spot, a commercial, a porn film. This is a masterful novel that focuses on the most pressing issue confronting the individual in the former Soviet bloc countries today: how to live one's life when one is truly free.

Genres: Fiction, Czech Literature, 20th Century, Literature, Novels, Literary Fiction, Contemporary

Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Ivan Klíma (born 14 September 1931, Prague, born as Ivan Kauders) is a Czech novelist and playwright. He has received the Magnesia Litera Award and the Franz Kafka Prize, among other honors.

Klíma's early childhood in Prague was happy and uneventful, but this all changed with the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, after the Munich Agreement. He had been unaware that both his parents had Jewish ancestry; neither were observant Jews, but this was immaterial to the Germans.
In November 1941, first his father Vilém Klíma, and then in December, he and his mother and brother were ordered to leave for the concentration camp at Theriesenstadt (Terezín), where he was to remain until liberation by the Russian Liberation Army in May, 1945. Both he and his parents survived incarceration—a miracle at that time—Terezín was a holding camp for Jews from central and southern Europe, and was regularly cleared of its overcrowded population by transports to "the East", death camps such as Auschwitz.
Klíma has written graphically of this period in articles in the UK literary magazine, Granta, particularly A Childhood in Terezin. It was while living in these extreme conditions that he says he first experienced “the liberating power that writing can give”, after reading a school essay to his class. He was also in the midst of a story-telling community, pressed together under remarkable circumstances where death was ever-present. Children were quartered with their mothers, where he was exposed to a rich verbal culture of song and anecdote.
This remarkable and unusual background was not the end of the Klíma's introduction to the great historical forces that shaped mid-century Europe. With liberation came the rise of the Czech Communist regime, and the replacement of Nazi tyranny with proxy Soviet control of the inter-war Czech democratic experiment. Klima became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.[4] Later, his childhood hopes of fairy tale triumphs of good over evil became an adult awareness that it was often “not the forces of good and evil that do battle with each other, but merely two different evils, in competition for the control of the world”.
The early show trials and murders of those who opposed the new regime had already begun, and Klíma's father was again imprisoned, this time by his own countrymen. It is this dark background that is the crucible out of which Klíma's written material was shaped: the knowledge of the depths of human cruelty, along with a private need for personal integrity, the struggle of the individual to keep whatever personal values the totalitarian regimes he lived under were attempting to obliterate.
For his writing abilities, Ivan Klíma was awarded Franz Kafka Prize in 2002 as a second recipient. His two-volume memoir Moje šílené století ("My Crazy Century") won the Czech literary prize, the Magnesia Litera, in the non-fiction category in 2010.

Biography from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Kl%...

Reviews

[Mohammad Hrabal · Rating 4 out of 5]

آخر آدمی که همه‌ی عمرش در کشوری محصور در سیم خاردار زندگی می‌کند، چطور می‌تواند چیزی یاد بگیرد، یا به چیزی دست یابد؟ ص 12 کتاب
بعضی وقت‌ها که به این دوره‌ی ناجور زندگی‌اش فکر می‌کرد، متوجه می‌شد که بدترین چیزش نه درهای قفل بود نه نگهبان‌هایی که سرشان فریاد می‌زدند، و نه این واقعیت که غذا هیچ وقت کافی نبود و اغلب همان مقدار اندک را هم ازشان می‌دزدیدند: بلکه این بود که همه چیز مالامال از دروغ بود. ص 19 کتاب
اکثر مردم نمی‌توانند زندگی‌ای متفاوت با زندگی واقعیشان را متصور شوند. می‌توانند رویایش را در سر بپرورانند، حتی می‌توانند به خیابان‌ها بروند و برایش تظاهرات کنند، اما چگونگی‌اش را نمی‌توانند متصور شوند. ص 20 کتاب
ای کاش مردی که این همه سال رئیس جمهور مملکت بود می‌توانست کار حقیقتا خوشایندی بکند، کاری که بتوانند روی فیلم ضبط‌اش کنند- اسب سواری کند، تنیس بازی کند، از زمین بلند شود. ص 48 کتاب
او فقط می‌خواست از این مملکت مستراح‌دانی نکبت‌بار که در آن به تنها چیزی که اهمیت می‌دهند این است که مجبورش کنند آن قدر کار کند تا جان از ماتحتش درآید و بعد هم در ملا عام نشان بدهند که چقدر خوشبخت است، فرار کند. ص 63 کتاب
آدم‌ها همین طوری‌اند: حسودند، فقط عاشق خودشان‌اند. اگر فرصت ناچیزی در اختیارشان بگذارند، خانه‌هاشان را با خاک یکسان می‌کنند، پل‌ها را به پیچ و مهره، جاده‌ها را به قلوه سنگ و دستگاه‌ها را به چرخ دنده فرو می‌کاهند؛ استخوان‌ها را خاک می‌کنند. همه چیز را آتش می‌زنند، چون عشق‌شان آتش است. او با مطالعه‌ی تاریخ می‌داند که مردم ذاتا عاشق آتش‌اند. آنها کلیساها، قلعه‌ها و قصرها را نگاه می‌کنند و رویای نظاره کردن سوختن‌شان در آتش را در سر می‌پرورانند. ص 73 کتاب
حقیقت را می‌توان سال‌ها و قرن‌ها سرکوب کرد، اما دست آخر بالاخره همیشه آشکار می‌شود. ص 85 کتاب
گفت: « زندگی در انتظار روشنایی است، نه در انتظار تاریکی. این را معلم هندی‌ام به من گفت؛ او کور بود.» ص 95 کتاب
متاسفانه، تهیه کنندگان خبر دقیقا همین را می‌خواستند. برایشان مهم نبود که حوصله‌ی بینندگان سر می‌رود یا نه. می‌دانستند که اکثر مردم در مورد برنامه‌ها حق انتخاب ندارند و حتی اگر فقط بیرون ریختن دود از دودکش را هم نشان بدهند، باز صفحه‌ی تلویزیون را نگاه می‌کنند. ص 102 کتاب
در اینجا مرز میان بودن و نبودن مبهم شده بود. هر جا که این اتفاق می‌افتد، از مرزهای دیگر نیز راحت‌تر می‌توان عبور کرد: مرزی که حرص، ریاکاری، نادرستی، بی شرمی و نومیدی را مشخص می‌کند، احتمالا در پس بقیه نهفته است. ص 109 کتاب
آره دنیا مثل یک ترازوی عظیم است. وقتی پلیدی به خوبی غلبه می‌کند، فرشته‌ها بر کفه‌ای که سبکتر است جمع می‌شوند. نمی‌توانی ببینیشان، اما حضور دارند، و تعادل را باز می‌گردانند. ص 126 کتاب
فوکا تصمیم می‌گیرد به مدیریت استودیو تلفن کند. حالا دیگر قانع شده که هیچ اشتباهی در کار نیست. درست است که برای این کار قرارداد دارد، اما در مملکتی که قانونش بی‌ثبات و متغیر است و گزینش اعمال می‌شود، قرارداد چه فایده‌ای دارد؟ ص 132 کتاب
خانه چیزی است که آن را در درونمان حمل می‌کنیم. آنهایی که خانه‌ای در درونشان ندارند، نمی‌توانند بسازندش، نه با بی‌اعتنایی و نه با سنگ. ص 145 کتاب
از کار باکی ندارد. اگر در یک کشور درست و حسابی زندگی می‌کرد و می‌توانست برای خودش کارگاهی درست کند، با کمال میل روزی دوازده ساعت کار می‌کرد؛ رئیس خودش می‌بود، نه نوکر یک آدم دیگر ص 171 کتاب
فقط دارم می‌گویم که معمولا بعضی‌ها می‌برند و دیگران می‌بازند. بعضی وقت‌ها معلوم می‌شود که بازنده‌ها همان‌هایی‌اند که فکر می‌کردند برده‌اند، و بالعکس. ص 177 کتاب
فرصت تاریخی چیست؟ صرفا لحظه‌ای‌ است که طی آن مردم باورشان می‌شود که توانسته‌اند جریان تاریخ را قطع کنند و در نتیجه فضایی برای مانور دادن بگشایند. این که آیا واقعا به این کار دست یازیده‌اند یا در واقع به چیزی خاتمه داده‌اند، موضوعی است که فقط خود تاریخ می‌تواند درباره‌اش قضاوت کند. ص 186 کتاب
- «می‌شود آدم‌ها را آنقدر آهسته مسموم کرد که هیچ کس متوجه نشود.»
- «منظورت با تلویزیون است؟»
دختر گفت: « ممکنه. اما برای این کار راه‌های زیادی وجود دارد. مثل شیوه‌ای که پانزده سال در مدرسه مسموم‌مان می‌کردند.» ص 198 کتاب
آدم‌ها با هم آشنا می‌شوند، از هم جدا می‌شوند، و شاید یک روز دوباره به هم بر بخورند، اما آدم‌های دیگری شده‌اند. ص 225 کتاب
دلش می‌خواست به تنهایی از آنجا برود و تا حد ممکن دور بشود. به جایی برود که هیچ کس را نشناسد، که غریبه‌ها واقعا غریبه باشند، که در آن اصلا آدمی وجود نداشته باشد، فقط صخره‌ها باشند و پرنده‌ها. ص293 کتاب

[Marc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spoiler alert! I have a bit mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it is very interesting as an evocation of the great upheavals in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Wall in 1989 (although nowhere names and countries are explicitly named). The main character, cameraman Pavel, after a failed escape attempt in his youth, has adapted to the old regime and, like all his countrymen, meekly follows the official line, even though he knows he’s confirming a regime of lies; Pavel is clinging to the faint hope that he ever will get space to fulfil his artistic dreams.

This book delivers a nice description of the atmosphere of hopelessness and anguish in Eastern Europe under communism, with especially a captivating portrait of the old, almost senile president in his Castle (evidently Gustav Husak), full of paranoid thoughts. Klima also makes the link with the personal life of Pavel that is completely jammed: all his relationships are breaking down, the child that he wished to have with the woman of his dreams, is aborted, he errs through his days in ever greater depression; just as the regime Pavel’s life has come to a dead end.

And then the revolution occurs, which is described by Klima in a rather indirect way. But through the eyes of Pavel, we see that this new era actually contains no real changes: a lot of old apparatchiks eagerly fill in the vacant places while the real (idealistic) revolutionaries are overrun in a very short time. Pavel himself also notices he no longer has the drive to make use of the space he now gets to make his dream come true and in his personal life he loses even the last link with the people he loves. If you now think: what a depressing story, you’re dead right, but Klima certainly knows how to put this on paper; you can detect clear kinship with Kafka and especially Kundera.

Nevertheless, in my view, this is not totally a successful novel. Klima jumps between different time layers, he also switches between reality and an ambitious film scenario Pavel works on; that does ensure a certain dynamism and nice mirror effects, but it makes the reading not really easy. In addition, some story lines are not worked out and some of the characters (especially the female) remain rather flat. Finally, and that really bothers me the most, Klima finds it necessary to have recourse to magic-realistic elements and that I always find an admission of weakness.

[Tony]

So, what do you do, Klíma, Brink, Solzhenitsyn? What do you you when The Wall comes down; when Mandela goes free; when they close the Gulag? What happens to your poetry, your anger, when there are no statues to topple?

'What are you thinking?' she asks.
'That you're near.'
'What is nearness?'
'There may be a definition of it, but I don't know what it is.'
'Try saying what comes into your mind.'
'I don't usually say what comes into my mind.'
'Say it now.'
'Alina, it's not easy for me to be intimate with someone.'
'That's exactly why I'm asking you this.'
'Nearness is the moment at which love climaxes.'

I stopped there -- wisely, I hope you agree -- and went fishing. Sorta.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

European Communism came to a fairly abrupt end around 1990. It was a heady time, but it was no stepping from the darkness into the light, just like that. There were steps forward, and retrograde steps as well. As a Hungarian, I recognize that the whole experience was a sword that cut both ways.

Of all the Eastern European writers, the one who comes closest to the truth is the Czech novelist Ivan Klíma:

Recently he'd begun to think that without even leaving the country he'd become an alien. It wasn't that all the familiar faces had disappeared; it was that from behind those faces different people had appeared. Butterflies had emerged from their unsightly cocoons and, with growing astonishment at their new appearance, were looking around for places to alight.

Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light looks at the life of a middle-aged news cameraman named Pavel Fuka who dreams of love, of having a son, of writing a screenplay with the same name as this book, but who never really connects.

When freedom comes, it begins to twist in the wind. In an alcoholic fog, he sleeps with women whom he sees as being interchangeable. He ends up running a company that films commercials and pornography. All the women whom he thinks he has loved have either rejected him or fallen by the wayside.

By way of contrast, he presents the aging President of Czechoslovakia, modeled perhaps after the long-ruling Gustav Husak, who is in his seventies and has a tenuous grip on life. He keeps seeing his offices filling up with the bodies or sometimes just the biers of the victims of his socialist state. He suspects his chamberlain, his valet, and all the people around him are impostors. In a word, he is as much a prisoner of the system as Pavel.

Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light is a somberly honest work. As Klima writes near the end:

What was death?

You live for as long as you still see some meaning in being alive. You can live less than your allotted time, but not longer. It's not important whether you're still breathing or not.

Death is the moment a person, as an alien, falls among aliens and they surround him like a clinging layer of damp earth.

That is what happens to Pavel.

[Daniel Clausen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in between...

When I was on the bus to work, during breaks in my work, during spare moments. A page here, a page there. I read this book in the in-between spaces. My full attention wasn't engaged, so I couldn't concentrate on all the little nuances that make a literary novel great...but even in those in-between spaces, this seemed like a good novel. It seemed like a nuanced novel told with honesty. The book is sometimes heartbreaking, but not in the way of a book like "The Kite Runner", which often left me devastated.

Sure, there were heartbreaking moments in this book, but the book also tried to communicate something very difficult to capture in literature -- the tragedy of blandness. Clearly, the blandness of communist is an enemy in this work, as is its nonsensical mediocrity, and that is a tough thing to depict -- it doesn't always come off as interesting. How could it? After all, blandness is blandness. It is tragic, however; so is its opposite, the parasitic new capitalism that follows. A capitalism that renders oppressed dreamers into porno directors.

Still, a very good book. A very good book about spaces in between -- a book I used to fill the spaces in between.

[Nada Elshabrawy · Rating 5 out of 5]

مراجعة مصورة للرواية على قناة دودة كتب.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJvNA...

[Mohsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

کتاب درست مال احوالات همین روزهای من بود. دو کتابی که در این چند وقت از ایوان کلیما خواندم را بیش از هر نوشته ی دیگری به ذهنیات خودم درباره ی ماوقع این چند ماه نزدیک دیدم. روزگار تاریکی بر یک ملت جاری است. اما امیدی هم به روشنایی نیست. تاریکی و روشنایی در زندگی مردم است، نه چیزی بیرون از آن که بتوان انتظارش را کشید.

[Ellie · Rating 3 out of 5]

پاول یک فیلمبردار تلویزیونی در دوره حکومت کمونیسته. پاول خودش هم از کاری که می‌کنه راضی نیست، زمانی که جوونتر بوده یکبار تلاش کرده از کشور فرار کنه و موفق نشده و در نهایت تصمیم گرفته وارد سیستمی بشه که خودش به دروغگو بودنش واقفه به این امید که یک روزی بتونه آزاده فیلمی که میخواد رو بسازه.
ما در واقع با دو تا داستان سر و کار داریم، یکی افکار ذهنیات پاول و دیگری فیلم‌نامه‌ای که اون مشغول نوشتنش هست.
مشکل اصلی اینه داستان شدیدا گیج کننده‌اس. کلیما مدام بین گذشته و حال زندگی پاول و واقعیت زندگیش و فیلمنامه خیالیش پرش می‌کنه و همین دنبال کردن داستان رو سخت می‌کنه. (حداقل من خیلی گیج شدم.) و در نهایت داستان جالبی هم برای گفتن نداره، شخصیت‌های داستان به غیر پاول خشک و بی‌روح هستن. و خوب پرداخته نشدن. و فکر می‌کنم بخش زیادی از داستان صرفا با تجربه زیسته در اون فضا قابل درکه (مثلا ما چنین تجربه‌ای نداریم)
با این حال خوندن این کتاب خالی از لطف نبود. کاراکتر رئیس جمهور پیر که عقلش زایل شده بود و به نزدیک‌ترین افرادش شک داشت خیلی جالب بود. (اگر اشتباه نکنم الهام گرفته از شخصیت گوستاو هوشاک بود.) جالب بود که نشون می‌داد قدرتمندترین شخص یک نظام توتالیتر به اندازه یک کارمند عادی تلویزیون زندانی حکومته.
از همه جالب توجه‌تر پرسش‌های اخلاقی‌ای بود که مطرح می‌شد. و این مساله که زیستن در یک نظام توتالیتر چطور مرزهای اخلاقی رو مبهم می‌کنه و معنای زندگی رو از بین میبره. و شاید بدترین جنبه حکومت توتالیتر مسموم کردن شهروندانش باشه، سمی که حتی با نابود شدن حکومت هم از وجودشون خارج نمیشه.
کتابی نبود که خیلی دوستش داشته باشم، مخصوصا در مقایسه با میلان کوندرا که با همین سبک و فضا می‌نویسه، ولی خوندنش خالی از لطف هم نبود.

[Stephen Durrant · Rating 3 out of 5]

The setting of the Czech writer Ivan Klima's novel is the "Velvet Revolution" of 1989. His hero, Pavel, has adapted ("sold out"?) to the Party after an unsuccessful attempt to flee the country. A filmmaker, he is reduced to making propaganda films. He dreams of producing a film of his failed flight, albeit rather more dramatic and heroic than the actual event, but at the end of the novel, after the revolution takes place, he takes a job making erotic films. Pavel is lost. Is he morally weak? The answer for those who have never lived in systems of oppression might be an easy "yes." But let's be generous . . . and honest: most of us are not heroic, we adapt, and we try to find consolations and excuses in our petty lives for our acts of accommodation. This book does not describe a pleasant reality, but it is a reality, and Klima's description is important for all of us who want to know about adaptation and accommodation under totalitarian regimes. A great passage from this novel captures it all: "There's nothing easier than persuading yourself you could really do something if you tried, as long as you know that they'll never give you the chance. The system never allowed you to win, and so it saved you from defeat as well" (p. 216).

[Bonny · Rating 4 out of 5]

STALIN still has much to answer for. Early in Ivan Klima's "Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light" the protagonist, Pavel, spends a night in the apartment of his lover, Eva. The sleeping arrangements are mentioned in passing: a sofa bed is unfolded in the living room for Eva's son, Robin. Pavel and Eva have the bedroom. A third room is "where the former husband sometimes lived in silence."

It's a domestic setup that strikes a Westerner as weird. But as anyone familiar with Eastern Europe will attest, the regimes of the Soviet empire routinely forced people into accommodations far more uncomfortable. Ivan Klima's basic theme in this novel, as in much of his previous fiction, is compromise and adaptation: how people deal with the demands a repressive state imposes not only on their domestic arrangements but also on their artistic arrangements and ultimately their spiritual ones. In this novel he goes further and examines the impact on such arrangements of the collapse of the old order, Czechoslovakia's "velvet revolution" of 1989.
Mr. Klima's writing was banned in his native Czechoslovakia until relatively recently, appearing only in samizdat editions or in books published outside the country. His international reputation, however, has grown steadily, and in a series of novels and plays he has examined with precision and clarity the dilemmas faced by the individual living in a closed society and the broader implications of that experience. The power of his work is not simply documentary. It resides in his ability to universalize, to generate from an essentially political situation ideas charged with philosophical, ecological and spiritual applications. In the fates of his trapped and struggling characters he discovers messages for the planet.

[Sonya · Rating 4 out of 5]

داستان از افکار مردی با نام پاول در طی انقلابی که در کشورش صورت می گیرد تشکیل شده . پاول در طی داستان سوالهایی در مورد مسایل مختلفی از جمله آزادی ،عدالت ،پیروزی ،مرگ و غیره مطرح می کند و براساس تجریاتش به آنها پاسخ می دهد . پاول عکاس و فیلمبرداری است که در دوران سانسور در کشورش با علاقه به فعالیت می پرداخت اما با تغییر حکومت او نیز علیرغم آزادی که برای فعالیت دارد علاقه ای به فعالیت های قبلی ندارد و تمام این تغییرات را چیزی سطحی می داند که در واقع تاثیری در میزان رفاه و رضایت مردم نداشته است .او به بیگانه ای در مملکت خود تبدیل شده است از پس چهره های آشنا آدم های متفاوتی بیرون آمده اند .حتی دوربینی که هنوز با خودش حمل می کرد نشانه ی بیگانگی اش بود وضعیتی که نمی توانست تمایزی بین امور ضروری و غیر ضروری بگذارد .
در حقیقت دنیای دور و بر آنها عوض شده بود و آنها سعی می کردند که آنرا به شکل سابقش برگردانند و این تضاد آشکار وضعیت آنها بود
به قول پاول : وقتی قلاب را می بلعیم چه امیدی به فرار وجود دارد ؟ آیا حتی خبرداریم که قلاب را بلعیده ایم ؟
آدم ها از هم جدا می شوند و روزیکه دوباره به هم برخورند آدم های دیگری شده اند ....

[Viv JM · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Waiting For The Dark, Waiting For the Light tells the story of Pavel, a TV cameraman at the time of the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia. It is an astute observation of how ordinary people behave in times of political oppression but also a beautiful and sympathetic insight into the human condition in general and of loneliness and regret in particular. Highly recommended.

Despite the Goodreads information for this particular edition, the author is not Paul E Wilson, but Ivan Klima. Paul E Wilson is the translator. I was tempted to switch editions because of this annoyance but I like the covers to match those I have read, so I have stuck with this edition! Maybe a kindly Goodreads librarian will help me out here..?

[Aarmin · Rating 5 out of 5]

جدا از مناسبت این کتاب با رژیم توتالیتری ما و شرایط زندگی زیر سایه و سلطه ی اون:
سوالهای اساسی تری از زبان قهرمان به نمایش گذاشته میشه. آیا واقعن میشه در یک جامعه توتالیتری از اخلاق شکل گرفته در این جامعه راه گریزی پیدا کرد؟ آیا زندگی در یک جامعه دموکراتیک کاملن اخلاقیه و در جامعه دیکتاتوری بر عکس اون ؟ آیا سختیها در یک جامعه دیکتاتوری به زندگی معنای بیشتری میبخشند و یا اون رو تهی میکنن؟ همکاری صنفی با رژیم توتالیتر اخلاقیه؟ آیا عشق و حضور اون رو میشه درک کرد؟ آیا خاطره برای انسان جامعه ی دیکتاتوری از واقعیت مهم تر نمیشه؟ دوست داشتن برای زیر یک سقف بودن کافیه؟
و سر انجام نویسنده میپرسه زندگی چیست؟ و کتاب رو به پایان میرسونه!

[Amir · Rating 2 out of 5]

کلیما احتمالن مشاهده‌گر خوبی است؛ این را از بعضی موقعیت‌های توصیف‌ شده در کتاب می‌توان فهمید، اما قصه‌گو نیست. یک چیز را تعریف می‌کند، تمام می‌شود، حالا بعدی را تعریف می‌کند، فرمی هم در کار نیست. می‌توان مقایسه کرد با کوندرا که علی‌رغم اینکه کتاب‌هایش فرم قطعه‌نویسی دارند عمیقن داستان‌اند؛ کوندرا قصه‌گوست، کلیما نیست.‏

[Ali Danayie · Rating 4 out of 5]

آدم ها تا وقتی زنده هستند به مرگ فکر نمی کنن و وقتی به لحظه های آخر رسیدن احساس می کنن سرشون کلاه رفته. قبل از اینکه واقعا فرصت زندگی داشته باشن مرگ بهشون رسیده،قبل از اینکه مفهوم زندگی رو بفهمن. زندگی میکنن بدون اینکه مرگ رو بپذیرن.
- تو مرگ رو پذیرفتی؟
جواب داد : نمیدونم ولی سعی میکنم حداکثر استفاده از زندگی رو ببرم.
- حداکثر استفاده از زندگی یعنی چه؟
- یعنی وقت تلف نکردن.
- اینکه جواب مناسبی نیست. وقت تلف نکردن یعنی چی؟یعنی نزدیک بودن به کسی که عاشقشی؟
- اگه عاشق کسی نبودی چی؟
- اون وقت باید دنبالش بگردی
...

[Szplug · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's nothing easier than persuading yourself you could really do something if you tried, as long as you know that they'll never give you the chance. The system never allowed you to win, and so it saved you from defeat as well.

A quietly devastating work, relentlessly bleak and uncompromising.

[Mojdeh · Rating 4 out of 5]

به تمام و کمال زندگی کردن یعنی:نزدیک بودن به آدمی که عاشقش هستی
واگر عاشق کسی نباشی؟
باید دنبالش بگردی

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. An interesting, original, clever novel with multiple narratives. The main protagonist is Pavel, a cameraman who works for a restrictive and corrupt regime. Pavel is a comprised, aimless, flawed, mediocre, uncommitted mid forties single man. The novel is set in Czechoslovakia, mainly in the 1980s. In 1989 there is a radical change of government. Before the change of government, Pavel’s work required him to censor the truth. He dreams of freedom to showcase his own ideas and talents. With the change in government Pavel finds himself struggling to adjust to his newly found freedom.

The book asks, what does it mean to be free? A thought provoking, memorable, worthwhile reading experience.

This book was first published in 1993.

[راضي النماصي · Rating 3 out of 5]

في أجواء محليّة جدًا حد التأمل، يكتب كليما عمّا لن يُجبر في الروح مهما حدث طالما أنه لا مجال للقصاص ولا حتى لأجوبة على ما حدث وكان مساهمًا به، إذ أن عالمه الجديد الطافح بـ"الحرية" لا يتيح ذلك، في رواية هي من الكآبة والغرابة بمكان. يعينها النثر القوي والشخصيات المثيرة للتفكير.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light" was a book that took me a long time to read and required a lot of thought when I was reading it. The main character, Pavel, is by far one of the most depressing people I have ever encountered, and his story is just so frustrating. His life does not even seem that tragic; he is just one of those people who leads a melancholy life, and it is frustrating because the author just does not tell you why. The plot is intricate. There appear to be two separate universes, where one of them is real life and one of them is Pavel's screenplay. The lines between real life and the screenplay, however, are extremely blurry. Many of the characters all overlap, with the end result being that there are at least three Pavels, three Alices, and two Evas who serve different purposes and are called by different names; and none of them have particularly happy endings. The president in the screenplay and in real life is like the exact same person, which does not help clarify boundaries in the slightest. And then the screenplay serves to provide a back-story for a criminal who also appears in real life, with shocking similarities to Pavel even though he was just a part of one of Pavel's documentaries in real life... The end result is thorough confusion over how everything fits together, what is real vs. one of Pavel's fantasies, what is going to happen in the future to all the different sets of overlapping characters, and why happiness just cannot be found. Despite the fact that it is one of the most depressing books I have ever read, it is extremely fun to analyze. I definitely enjoyed the complexity of the interactions, and I hope to read it again someday.

[Nazanin Banaei · Rating 5 out of 5]

به هر صورت، در اینجا مرز میان بودن و نبودن مبهم شده بود. هر جا که این اتفاق می‌افتد، از مرزهای دیگر نیز راحت‌تر میتوان عبور کرد : مرزی که حرص، ریاکاری، نادرستی، بی‌شرمی و نومیدی را مشخص می‌کند احتمالآ در پس بقیه نهفته است.
حرص و نادرستی چیست؟ نکبت و فلاکت چیست؟ حرص انگشتی زیر گلوی آدمی سیر، اتاقی اضافی برای خرت و پرتهای به درد نخور، عاشقی محروم از محبت در آغوشت است.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We all lived in this country. Given the conditions that existed here, every one of us came out of it scarred in some way. And who can establish a borderline between guilt and innocence, when that borderline runs somewhere right down the middle of each and every person?"

[Zeynab Babaxani · Rating 4 out of 5]

سوالاتی که توی کتاب مطرح شده بود رو خیلی دوست تر می داشتم
مکث ها عاالی بودند

[Azra Javanmardi · Rating 3 out of 5]

«غریبه‌ها به آن‌ها تنقلات تعارف می‌کردند، و آن‌ها صمیمیت خاصی را احساس کردند که از نومیدی آن لحظه بالایشان می‌کشید. آن شب، قدم‌زنان او را به خانه‌اش رساندند. او در خوابگاه محوطه‌ بیمارستانی که در آن کار می‌کرد زندگی می‌کرد. هردوشان او را بوسیدند و با او خداحافظی کردند. آن بوسه هیچ معنایی نداشت. با این همه، آن بوسه و خود او به یادش ماندند. از قیافه و شخصیت او خوشش می‌آمد. در رفتارش صداقت مهربانانه‌ای بود، اما در زیر آن، اعماق پنهان نفوذناپذیری را احساس کرد که به طرف او جلبش می‌کردند.
آن‌ها مدتی با هم بیرون می‌رفتند، و او فکر می‌کرد که همان‌قدر که او را دوست دارد، او هم دوستش می‌دارد. از این بابت مطمئن بود تا این‌که اتفاقی افتاد که، در آن زمان، به نظر خودش نقطه عطف کم‌اهمیت‌تری می‌آمد تا به نظر او. حالا ترجیح می‌داد به یادش نیاورد.»

با چنین ترجمه‌ای روبرو هستیم!

[Kathryn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too Many Questions

In my opinion, I believe Pavel was questing for quest. His quest to make a film was the writer's tool for expressing his own views. All of the female characters were foils who asked a lot of questions so Pavel could express his thoughts out loud instead of in his head. The characters seemed soulless and two dimensional. The only complete character was his mother. But maybe all of this was intentional and in the that case the author succeeded.

[محمّدحسین · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب خوبیه، ارزش چندبار خوندن رو داره، جزء کتب ویزه من محسوب میشه

یک داستان و ایده گیرا، روایت خوب و ترجمه مناسب
البته برای درک عمق داستان باید فضاش رو حس کرده باشی و گرایشات سیاسی داشته باشی.
فضای کسی که از حکومت متنفره، اما مجبوره به خاطر شغلش خواسته های حکومت رو اجرا کنه
فارغ از بحث سیاسی، ماجرای درام هم داره که به نظرم خوب پرداخت شده
البته بخش های کوچکی از کتاب هست که ممکنه به دل نشینه

[Jonfaith]

Apparently I read this in 2000, I ofund a bookmark to attest to such and I found references on our samizdat site. For the life of me, I can't recall this book.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my third read of a Klima novel. The others, The Ultimate Intimacy and No Saints or Angels, were set well into Czechia’s post Communist era. Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light begins late in the old dispensation, proceeding into the subsequent era.

The plot centers on one individual who had once been imprisoned for attempting to leave the Communist world, but had become a government official by the time of the change.

A complex story, it sent me on numerous internal searches to clarify characters and plot elements (I was glad to be reading on the Kindle app).

Kudos to Klima and his translator for the clear, readable prose.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work is literary fiction, esoteric and almost magical reality in portions. I found it interesting but not 100% successful. The main character floats through life in a Communist system, unable to commit to himself, his art (he is a film maker), his relationships or even his elderly mother. Because he is only on the surface of his life it was not engaging for me. Pavel is present for the end of Communist rule and instead of it ending with a bang it ended with a sort of so what.
I am glad I read it but it is not a book I would recommend to others.

[Alireza Nazarahari · Rating 3 out of 5]

الان که دارم این نظر رو مینویسم ساعت ۳ و چهل و سه دقیقه صبح ۱۲ ام مرداد سال ۱۳۹۷ هستش و ممکنه بخاطر کم خوابی صداقت بیش از حد از خودم نشون بدم، پیشاپیش ببخشید خانم پوریاوری.
تا حالا شده فیلم های تلویزیون رو ببنید و بگید عه اینجا چی‌شد؟ چرا این دو تا شخصیت رفتن تو اتاق ولی یکیشون اومد بیرون و فیلم تموم شد بدون هیچ توضیحی؟ به زبان فارسی سخت عرض کنم، تا حالا شده حس کنید یه محرم ندونستنتون که یه قسمت از یه فیلم رو بدونید؟ من حین خوندن این کتاب چندین بار این حس بهم دست داد.
حس میکنم همون اتفاقی که در مورد شخصیت اوشین توی پخش تلویزیون افتاد اینجا هم سر پاول فوکا افتاد و بخاطر سانسور از یه دنیا به یه دنیای دیگه اورده شد.
اما در مورد روند کلی داستان باید بگم که کتاب در مورد فضای برزخ بین حکومت استبدادی و حکومت بروز توی یکی از کشورای اروپای شرقی اتفاق میفته. قاعدتا به همین دلیل اتمسفر تاریکی داره. در کل داستان حول دغدغه های ذهنی اقای فوکا، رابرت بارتوش و اقای رییس جمهور مستبد میفته. حس من این بود که بجز فوکا به بقیه شخصیت ها به اندازه کافی پرداخته نشد و هر کدومشون به پختگی کافی نرسیدن.
در کل اگر بخوام کسی رو دعوت به کتاب خوندن بکنم این کتاب رو توی پیشنهاداتم نمیارم.