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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