Career
He took part in the partisan movement in Slovakia during World World War World War II After the war, he was at first a staunch supporter of the Czechoslovak Communist regime and one of its most prominent journalists. However, being disillusioned, he became the regime"s vocal critic, for which he was persecuted and censored. In the autumn of 1967 he went to Israel as a protest against the Czechoslovak stance during the Six-Day War, but returned to Czechoslovakia soon afterwards.
After the invasion to Czechoslovakia by the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact in August 1968 he emigrated again, this time to Austria, where he lived for the next 21 years.
Shortly after the fall of the communist regime in November 1989 he returned home to Czechoslovakia (January 1990). After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia (1992), with which he strongly disagreed he moved to Prague.
Died suddenly due to cardiac weakness during a short visit of Slovakia and was buried in Bratislava. Mňačko is one of the few Slovak writers of the 1950s and 1960s who were translated into the English language.