In her novels, short stories, historical essays, and diaries, she has chronicled the repression of Czech dissidents and explored themes of political and personal disillusionment.

[1] In 1970, she quit the communist party and joined the Czech dissident movement; she was blacklisted as a writer, her completed novels were removed from library shelves, and two screenplays she was developing were put on hiatus.

[1] Kantůrková garnered success as a writer with the 1967 publication of her first novel, The Funeral, which explored the death of a farmer caused by communist collectivization in the 1950s.

Her other writing from the period, the novel The Master in the Tower and a historical work on Jan Hus, focused on the struggle between communism and Christianity.

[1] After the Velvet Revolution, Kantůrková served as president of the Czech Writer's Union and was a staff member in the Ministry of Culture.