“We either have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of our soul and is not, in essence, dependent on any observations of the world or assessments of the situation. Hope is not a forecast. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart, transcending the world we immediately experience and anchored somewhere beyond its boundaries. (…) In short, I believe that the deepest and most important hope— the only one that can keep us afloat despite everything, compel us to do good deeds, and which is the sole true source of the human spirit’s soaring ambition and its striving—we draw, so to speak, ‘from elsewhere.’ And it is this hope, above all, that gives us the strength to live and to keep trying again and again, even under conditions that appear so hopeless on the surface, such as those here.” 

Václav Havel’s reflections on hope, formulated in 1986 in the book Dálkový výslech, remain as relevant as ever, even after forty years. Is hope a state of mind, not of the world? Where can we find hope in our current, seemingly hopeless times? And how is hope related to the much-discussed resilience of today? These are the questions for FALL 2026 and its guests.

Discussions, readings, meetings with authors, experts, and artists, guided exhibition tours, and programs for families with children.



Guests: Sofi Oksanen, Oliver Lovrenski, Marie NDiaye, Paata Šamugia, Pavel Talankin, Marek Šindelka, Vratislav Maňák, Alberto Manguel, Adam Borzič, and others

More at www.doxfall.cz.