Funeral of Jiří Stránský takes place in Prague

The funeral of writer Jiří Stránský took place Prague’s Church of Our Lady Before Týn on Monday. The mass was served by the head of the Czech Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Dominik Duka, who said that Mr. Stránský had enriched Czech culture thanks to the brave life he had led.

Mr. Stránský, who was 87, spent almost a decade in Communist labour camps as a political prisoner after being convicted of “treason” in the hard-line 1950s and drew on those experiences in his writings. In the 1990s he became president of the Czech PEN Club.