The Czech Centre of the International PEN Club awarded Mr Havel with the prize for his life-long literary activities and for the enduring and consistent efforts aimed at promoting humanist positions initiated by Čapek. Mr Havel received the Prize at Brožík Hall at the Prague City Hall.
In his acceptance speech Mr Havel conceded he does not like to write, mostly when he is about to start. "I don't like to write and tell myself, maybe rightly so. Maybe I would have repeated myself in all the plays, speeches and essays I didn't write and made them into meaningless clichés," he said, adding it was not easy to write a speech every week under the pressure of deadlines while he was Czech President.
Václav Havel took active role in the resurrection of the Czech PEN Club while the totalitarian regime was still in power in Czechoslovakia. It was mainly due to his initiative Czech PEN Clubs activities were reborn in August 1989. Already when he was Czech President, Mr Havel was elected an honorary member of the PEN Club's committee. In 2006, he was elected by the Board of the PEN Club to become the Honorary President of the Czech Centre of the PEN Club.
Karel Čapek Award has been given since 1994 every second year for a work in the area of prose, drama or essay to a Czech author, or for a life-long work. The exception was made in case of the first Award winners, the foreign authors Günter Grass and Philip Roth. The other prize winners include Arnošt Lustig, Jiří Kratochvil, Josef Topol, Ludvík Vaculík, Ladislav Smoček and the former president of the Czech branch of the PEN Club of long standing, Jiří Stránský. The Award is linked to a reward of CZK 150.000.
Lidovky.cz, PRAGUE, January 17, 2008