Second breath

Beneš, Jan, Jan Beneš

Second Breath is a book about the Communist labor camp in the late 1950's. Written in 1963, its release was banned in Czechoslovakia ideological department of the Central Committee in 1964, so the book was first published in English in the United States under the name Second Breath (1969). First published in Czech, but again abroad, in Switzerland in publishing confrontation in 1974. The novel is a celebration of human solidarity and decency, qualities which the prisoners - mostly political - could not break the system, which is stripped of all rights by using them consistently across the prison machine trodden under foot the most basic - human dignity.