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Reading is of course a solitary pleasure, but next week literature comes off the page here in Prague with public discussions, readings and signings - all part of the city's annual writers' festival. Among the world-renowned authors taking part is the highly successful US crime writer Elmore Leonard - who you may know thanks to films such as Get Shorty and Jackie Brown . Czech authors due to participate include Jiri Grusa, who is currently the Czech Republic's ambassador to Austria, and the famous dissident writer Ludvik Vaculik. Also appearing

If you want access to an official document in the Czech Republic it is your right, thanks to a law that was passed in 1999. Officially at least, the days of faceless bureaucrats working from vast fortress-like offices with no regard for the public are over. But a new book which has just been published, claims that there are many cases of the law being broken, often by state bodies themselves. Alena Skodova has more:

Tamizdat is a Prague-based company which distributes music from all over Central and Eastern Europe, and helps groups find an audience in the west. Tamizdat is also working on a project to preserve underground recordings made during the Communist era. Company director Mathew Covey spoke to Ian Willoughby, and began by explaining what exactly Tamizdat does.

On June 10, 1942, the village of Lidice West of Prague was razed to the ground by the Nazis in revenge for the assassination of the German Reich's protector Reinhardt Heidrich in the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. To remember this horrific event from WW II, the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia decided to erect a memorial in Lidice at the end of the 1970s. Giant iron-and-concrete construction started in the mid 1980s, and some 30 million crowns were invested. After 1989, the construction of the memorial, strongly marked by Communist ideology,

The housing situation in the Czech Republic has long been a painful issue with no viable solution in sight. Over the past few years, Czech governments have come up with various schemes to support housing construction and make small, so-called start-up flats available to young families. Just a few days before the June general elections, the Social Democratic government has introduced low-interest loans for young people but, as Alena Skodova reports, there is a catch.

"One of the greatest stage designers of the planet called 'Theatre'", "a magician of the theatre", "a real master, craftsman and artist of theatre" - those are just a few the tributes paid to the world-renowned Czech stage designer and architect Josef Svoboda, who passed away last week. Pavla Horakova has more.

The European Union's Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen paid a visit to Prague on Thursday, to reassure the Czechs over the post-war Benes decrees. The decrees sanctioned the expulsion of Czechoslovakia's German population after the war, and representatives of German expellees are now clamouring for compensation. Some Austrian and German politicians, meanwhile, are trying to link the issue with the Czech Republic's accession to the EU. But as Rob Cameron reports, Mr Verheugen made it quite clear to reporters that the dispute was a storm

A permanent International Criminal Court - the ICC - to try crimes against humanity became a reality earlier this week after several more countries ratified the treaty which sets it up. But the Czech Republic is not among them. Alena Skodova has more:

The tiny central Bohemian village of Kacov can hardly lay claim to fame exactly, but it has received a fair bit of attention in the past six years. Not so long ago NATO officials allegedly zeroed in on a bizarre looking unidentified object near Kacov on their satellite maps of central Europe and asked the Czech defence ministry for an explanation. As it turned out, the bizarre looking object had nothing to do with the Czech Republic's military arsenal - it was the biggest collection of used refrigerators in the world - over 1,800 of

A financial dispute pitting the Social Democrat government against parliament has raised questions about the Czech Republic's ability to finance its contribution to the U.S.-led "war on terrorism." The government is asking parliament to approve a 35 million-dollar funding package to pay for deploying a Czech army field hospital in Afghanistan and a chemical warfare unit in Kuwait, as requested by the United States and Britain. But earlier this week the lower house rejected the plan to finance the missions through the issuing of state-backed bonds.