Payam Javan: Ivan Klíma, a prominent Czech novelist and one of the most influential figures in Central European literature, passed away on Saturday morning, October 4, at the age of 94. The news of his death was announced by his son, Michal Klíma, a journalist and media activist.

Klíma authored more than twenty books that have been translated into over thirty languages. His works, including Love and Garbage, My Merry Mornings, and The Spirit of Prague, earned him an international readership and made him one of the most widely read Czech authors in Iran and beyond.

Born on September 14, 1931, in Prague, Klíma spent part of his childhood in the Terezín labor camp—an experience that profoundly shaped his worldview and writing. He rose to literary prominence in the 1960s, but after the suppression of the Prague Spring and his opposition to Communist censorship, he was expelled from the party and banned from publishing. During those years, he worked as a street sweeper, surveyor, and medical orderly, yet continued to write clandestinely, circulating his works as samizdat or publishing them abroad.

After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Klíma regained the freedom to publish openly, and his books reappeared in Czech bookstores. In the years that followed, he released numerous works, including The Island of the Dead Kings, The Ultimate Intimacy, and his two-volume memoir My Crazy Century. His writing consistently explored the human struggle for dignity and moral integrity under authoritarian regimes.

A longtime president of the Czech Centre of PEN International, Klíma was also an ardent admirer of Karel Čapek, about whom he wrote several books. He married his wife Helena in 1958, and the couple had two children, Michal and Hana. Until his final days, Klíma lived in Prague, where his clear, humane voice and philosophical simplicity secured his place as one of the defining figures of 20th-century Czech literature.