Ten den – 17. listopad 1989 – Beck Michal (2019)

The gathering of students at Albertov and the subsequent Massacre on Národní Street entered history. Thirty years later, we return to this event. In the book That Day – November 17, 1989, we bring the ethos, hope, and also disappointment of that time closer to contemporary readers. We do this in a unique way, as the book about an event that occurred before they were born was prepared by current students Michael Beck, Matouš Hartmann, Alžběta Ambrožová, and Anna Palánová with the help of acclaimed writer Aleš Palán (Magnesia Litera, annual award of the Czech Literary Fund), who directly collaborated on the final literary form of the book. In the project, the authors gathered the voices of direct participants from that day: students, random bystanders, and intervening police officers. They were interested in how all these people experienced that day and what they expected from it. What thoughts did they wake up with in the morning, and what did they think by evening, what future did they see ahead of them at the moment when the demonstration was dispersed and the wounds were counted. From the collected materials, the authors prepared a literary collage with the participation of Aleš Palán, informed by methods used by Svetlana Alexievich, for example. Unlike the Belarusian Nobel laureate, however, we acknowledge the identities of individual respondents in our publication. Thus, the readers do not hear from a detached…