Few could doubt the literary bona fides of the Czech Republic, a country that elected a dissident playwright, Vaclav Havel, as its first post-Communist president. Literature is at the center of the Czech heart because it created us and liberated us.
As Austria-Hungary strove to make us German, writers and poets worked to create and preserve the idea of Czech language and national identity. When the Communist Party fought to purge intellectual rebellions, dissidents met in Prague’s legendary smoke-filled pubs to discuss and smuggle their banned work through the samizdat network.
Famously, Prague, known as the City of a Hundred Spires, was the foremost muse for the troubled mind of one Franz Kafka, despite his uneasy relationship with the city. (Communist authorities tried to erase Kafka from Czech history for decades.)
While Prague hasn’t escaped the commercialization befalling many European metropolises — Gothic cathedrals now share space with luxury fashion brands and golden-arch fries — its literary life cannot be snuffed out. Literature and myth live in every cobblestone, leading down narrow alleyways in the city’s Old Town toward medieval alchemic mysteries, techno parties in centuries-old basements and astronomical clocks tracking the paths of stars.
What should I read before I pack my bags?
The secret to Prague’s lasting beauty is as arbitrary as it is straightforward: Neither the Allies nor the Axis felt the need to destroy the city during World War II. Prague held on to its shimmering rooftops and medieval bridges built by Holy Roman emperors. Though war didn’t change the city’s looks, it did reshape the soul of its people.
The protagonist in Jaroslav Hasek’s novel “The Good Soldier Svejk” is greasing his rheumatic knees in a Prague apartment when the news of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination reaches his ears. Svejk had been let go from the army when he was officially certified as an idiot, but the outbreak of World War I hurls him into the conflict. Around one million Czechs fought for Austria-Hungary, often with little understanding of why they should risk lives on the empire’s behalf. The loss of individuality to conflict is at the heart of the Czech experience: a country trying to build, constantly usurped by its larger neighbors.
In Bohumil Hrabal’s novel “I Served the King of England,” an aspiring hotelier named Ditie studies the art of service at a prestigious Prague hotel, where he nearly hangs himself after being accused of stealing a spoon. Under German occupation, he falls in love with Lise, an ardent Nazi, and submits to medical examinations to ensure that his sperm is Aryan-worthy. Eventually, Ditie fulfills his dream of opening his own hotel — where he hosts the writer John Steinbeck — but he is poised to lose everything when communism makes his newfound wealth a target. The story is a mad dash through our chaotic 20th century, when Prague changed radically — and yet, not at all — leaping from empire to democracy to fascist occupation to communism and, finally, to American-inspired capitalism.
Ivan Klima’s memoir, “My Crazy Century,” begins with the author’s childhood in Terezin, a World War II concentration camp 30 miles north of Prague. The postwar years trace the Czech pivot toward communism as the only path to reclaiming the humanity stolen by Nazi ambitions. Like many of his countrymen, Klima was a believer until he wasn’t, observing the communist movement’s devolvement into Stalinist purges, socialist realism and Soviet occupation of Prague.
Much as Klima tapped into his experiences, the dissident Eva Kanturkova drew on her time as a political prisoner in her novel “My Companions in the Bleak House.” The book’s narrator is snatched from the streets and trapped in a prison with other women who have committed so-called crimes against the regime: being Romany, being unemployed and performing sex work.
What books should I bring along with me?
Arguably, no writer has loved Prague more than Jan Neruda. In “Prague Tales,” Neruda captures the bourgeoise ecosystem of the 1870s in charming tales based on his own upbringing in Mala Strana, one of Prague’s oldest neighborhoods, nestled just under Prague Castle. Here, a law student is distracted from his learning by the haves and have-nots in his building falling in love, plotting to overthrow Austria-Hungary and attending funerals to slander the dead.
Within Michal Ajvaz’s novel “The Other City” is an alternate version of Prague: The Klementinum library transforms into a jungle, a ship sails through the snow-blanketed streets and the narrator battles the citizens of Other Prague who want him to leave their curious world alone. To know the city, one must surrender to the apparitions at the edge of one’s vision, uncertain whether the winding alleyways may lead to ecstasy or curse.
In Daniela Hodrova’s “City of Torment,” a compendium of three novels, the protagonist, Alice, begins the story by gazing out her apartment window over the Olsany graveyard; to avoid being transported to a concentration camp, she takes flight in pursuit of her lover — or jumps to her death. Later in the trilogy, Prague becomes occupied by marionettes and turns into a circle of the inferno, where Hodrova tries to swap places with her protagonist. This hometown love letter is a nod to the city’s dizzying architecture, fragmented identity, and troubled history. It also bears witness to the deadening of the human soul caused by the totalitarian war on art.
What books can show me other facets of the city?
As Prague spins out into its less photogenic outskirts, away from the five towns of the historic center, citizens go about their lives in monotone Brutalist neighborhoods. Some of the most authentic Prague stories take place in these sidliste, far from the tourist bustle and absinthe bars of Old Town.
Within the perfect moral society of Homo Sovieticus — the Communist conformist ideal — the authorities refused to acknowledge widespread drug abuse, facilitating a well-hidden culture in Prague. In Radek John’s soul-shattering novel “Memento,” young Michal escapes his tyrannical father by attending drug parties. There he meets Eva, and their shared passion for morphine and methamphetamine traps the two lovers in a cycle of codependence and poverty. The book mirrors the spin of getting high, getting even and getting arrested in a city that has become one of Europe’s most popular drug destinations.
In Petra Hulova’s “Three Plastic Rooms,” a Prague sex worker invites us to witness her daily business, addiction to spending, revulsion for the dehumanizing effects of technology and fear of growing too old for her trade. The book is not for the faint of heart: The narrator expresses a full spectrum of ageist, fatphobic and misogynistic sentiments that land somewhere between authenticity and authorial trolling. The protagonist laughs at the many absurdities of desire while using the same humor to cope with the traps capitalism has set for her, in a city where the sex industry is a popular visitor attraction.
If I have no time for day trips, what books could take me there instead?
Seekers of beauty will roam the vast Bohemian Massif, where ghostly dryads are said to dance in the ruins of castles and picturesque pubs sustain shrinking villages. In “Kytice,” Karel Jaromir Erben turns Czech legends into poems that capture the fables and Grimm-esque horrors of the vast countryside, showing what a Czech child might imagine looms under their bed.
Czech villages are also rich in lore. In “Rustic Baroque,” Jiri Hajicek portrays the village subcultures now and decades ago. The novel’s protagonist, a genealogist who works for wealthy expatriates, stumbles upon a tale of revenge among a farmers’ agrarian collective. The book tackles the painful subject of Czechs’ reconciliation with a shameful past and the terrifying power of pettiness and envy in life under totalitarian surveillance.
For one of the most beloved works from Czech small towns, we return to Hrabal, and his novel “Cutting it Short.” In the brief time between world wars, the hedonistic Maryska runs a brewery with her monkish husband. Maryska shocks the townspeople by seeking pleasure, mainly in feasts after pig killings and in the golden beer her husband brews. When she goes too far by cutting her famously long blond hair, she causes a moral crisis among her neighbors. This erotic work of summer caprice lays the playfulness of the Czech soul bare.
As we leave Prague and its surroundings, the final word should belong to the city’s most famous literary child, Kafka: “Prague doesn’t let go, either of you or me. This little mother has claws.” In other words, one visit will never be enough.
Jaroslav Kalfar’s Prague Reading List
-
“The Good Soldier Svejk,” Jaroslav Hasek
-
“I Served the King of England” and “Cutting it Short,” Bohumil Hrabal
-
“My Crazy Century,” Ivan Klíma
-
“My Companions in the Bleak House,” Eva Kanturkova
-
“Prague Tales,” Jan Neruda
-
“The Other City,” Michal Ajvaz
-
“City of Torment,” Daniela Hodrova
-
“Memento,” Radek John
-
“Three Plastic Rooms,” Petra Hulova
-
“Kytice,” Karel Jaromir Erben
-
“Rustic Baroque,” Jiri Hajicek
-
The works of Franz Kafka
The post Read Your Way Through Prague appeared first on New York Times.
