Journal d'un contre-révolutionnaire, though completed in 1969, does not suffer from lack of perspective. It is a work of literature, perhaps the most brilliant and accomplished to come from Czechoslovakia since the intervention, and at the same time a triumph of clever political journalism….

Kohout's book is not a self-justification, but an attempt to get the contradictions in his own life into some sort of coherent relationship. The Journal is made up three separate narratives, printed with rather obvious symbolism in three different typefaces, which advance in a sort of triple formation by installments. There is a journal which starts on August 21, which finds Kohout on holiday in Italy at a crisis in his relationship with the young girl Z. The second element is a refurbished journal covering the years between 1945 and late 1967, beginning with the Prague rising against the Germans and ending with a comic and memorable...