He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, a Prague Spring participant and dissident in the 1970s until he was not allowed to return from Austria.

While there, he became attracted to the reform movement and resigned from the Union of Writers due to questions concerning his "cultural-political orientation".

Czech-born UK playwright Tom Stoppard's Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth is inspired by these events.

[3] His most notable play is the drama Poor Murderer, which opened on Broadway in Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1976.

[4] His novels include White Book (an absurdist picture of life under Communism), I Am Snowing (a post-Communism story about the opening of the Communist-era secret police informer files, the effect of that opening on the informers and their victims, and thus about the corrosive effect of the Communist regime), The Widow Killer (a detective story set in World War II Nazi-occupied Prague), and The Hangwoman (a black-humor story about executioners), Seven Days in a Week (1965) and Morgen tanzt die ganze Welt (1952).