Professor Leopold Nettles, the “hero†of Largo Desolato, is the author of a book that contains a troublesome paragraph laying him open to arrest on charges of “disturbing the intellectual peace.†Pressed by the government to recant, Nettles is torÂtured—by internal demons as well as external ones. Vaclav Havel has created a vivid and terrifying portrait of the writer in the totalitarian state that is as real and immediate as today’s headlines.
