The writer Jan Stavinoha was born in Prague in May 1945, a couple of weeks
after the Soviet Red Army freed the Czechoslovak capital from Nazi
control. In 1968 the Soviet Army returned to Prague not as liberators but
as oppressors. Stavinoha, then a 23-year-old student of classical music,
forged paperwork saying he was a "reliable person" worthy of a
passport — and fled to the West. Today, nearly 40 years later,
he is a popular 'Dutch' novelist, and, he says, a "tourist" in
his homeland.