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One in the Crown
Journeys series
Author: Myla Goldberg |
Sometimes a city can be like a bird.
Just as the magpie is an inveterate
collector, hoarding beautiful eclectic
bits to line its nest, so Prague retains
fragments from bygone regimes and centuries
past to create a city of juxtaposition
that is alternately exquisite and bizarre.
Prague’s personality is expressed
as much by its obvious beauty as by
its overlooked details. This unforgettable
place is brought to life by acclaimed
author Myla Goldberg, a former Prague
expat, whose first novel, Bee Season,
captivated so many with its unique voice
and exhilarating prose.
Goldberg lived in Prague in 1993,
just as the process of Westernization
was getting under way, the city straddling
a past it wished to shed and a future
it was eager to embrace. In 2003, she
returned to see what the pursuit of
capitalism had wrought and to observe
the integral ways in which Prague’s
character had endured. In Time’s
Magpie, Goldberg explores a
city where centuries-old buildings have
become receptacles for Western values
and a generation defined by the Communist
regime coexists with a generation for
whom Communism is a rapidly fading memory.
Wander through the narrow alleyways
and cobblestone streets to places most
tourists never see—to a neighborhood
eerily transformed by the devastating
flood of 2002; to an anachronistic amusement
park that is home to a discomfiting
array of Technicolor confections; and
to the cabinets of curiosity in the
Strahov Monastery, where hidden among
deceptively modest displays of butterfly
specimens and ladies’ fans are
creatures that defy the laws of taxidermy.
This imaginative, individualistic journey
will show you the odd and unique corners
of a city often seeking to erase what
its very stones will not allow it to
forget.
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From Publishers Weekly
Goldberg, author of the acclaimed
2001 novel Bee Season, depicts
a culturally and historically complex
Prague in this newest entry in the
Crown Journeys series (after Kinky
Friedman’s The
Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic).
In describing her experiences visiting
such traditional tourist destinations
as Kafka’s grave and lesser-known
attractions like the display cabinets
in the Strahov Monastery, Goldberg
brings to life Prague’s past;
upon entering the reading room at
the Czech National Library, she imagines
how the room must have looked centuries
ago, the "rectangular wooden
tables lined with hungry Jesuits,
the air echoing with sounds of priestly
mastication." Goldberg also
recounts her interactions with the
Czechs, comparing the economic and
cultural development of the city
to the values and dispositions of
its inhabitants. Her encounter with
two police officers who demand that
she pay a fine for walking along
a passageway prohibited to pedestrians
demonstrates the lamentable reality
that "the Westernization of
Prague’s commercial sector
does not extend to its cops," the
majority of whom "are interested
in using their position in whatever
way they can for personal or material
gain." Goldberg’s musings
on all aspects of the Prague experience,
from the dearth of public bathroom
facilities at the Lunapark amusement
area to the resonant sounds of the
city ("the rubber burble of
car tires against cobblestone, the
screech of tram wheels grinding against
the rails, the clomp of a babushka’s
heavy shoes against the sidewalk,
and the murmur of manifold conversations"),
make this a rich and vivid reflection
on a beautiful, multifaceted city.
© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
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$16.95 (hardcover)
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