The most recommended books about the Czech Republic

It is not only that I have read many times Milan Kundera's only collection of stories—I have read it aloud to each of the ten generations of my students in a creative writing course I taught at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, from 2007 to 2017. They should have read themselves stories by Kundera and other grand masters of literature that I recommended, but since I couldn't rely that they all would do that, I had no alternative but to read them myself.

Seven stories from this book were very useful and instructive to my students because they contained the very quintessence of the storytelling. It was just enough to listen attentively my readings and comments and many secrets of the prose writing would have been revealed…

Women rarely feature as central figures in most works about Prague. In this book, Iggers introduces us to an array of fascinating female writers, activists, powerful ladies of society, and survivors who have lived in Prague and its environs over the past two hundred years. Each chapter includes a brief introduction and excerpts from these women’s writings, such as diaries, letters, and newspaper articles. The reader can thus hear these women’s voices and feel transported to a different moment in history. Some entries are hard to read, such as Milada Horáková’s farewell letter to her teenage daughter, written on June 23, 1950. The lead defendant in Communist Czechoslovakia’s first public show trial, Horáková was executed three days later. Wilma Iggers is a Czechoslovak native who escaped to Canada after the Nazis invaded her country in 1938, which only enhances the perspectives that she brings to these women’s lives. 

This is a superbly plotted novel about the Cold War that begins in 1950 but whose main developments take place in 1969. 

It brilliantly weaves fiction into real history and places entirely believable characters into its very well-paced, suspenseful narrative. I loved it for dealing with events around the time I was born and then focuses on developments that shaped my youthful view of the world at age 21. But it is more than a trip down memory lane. 

It is very moving on father-son relationships, has believable male and female leads, gives a very good account of life in Cold War Prague, and gets readers into the mindset of the spy. I found it unputdownable and would wake in the night wanting to read a bit more of it.

Karou is caught in a war between angels and demons (the ultimate simplified description). And Karou is a main character I love to cheer for. She's just so witty and full of angst on a totally relatable level. She's having the mother of all identity crises and feeling the ultimate tug of war between the human world and a dimension inhabited by the strange creatures that raised her.

Pair that awesome premise with Laini Taylor's incredibly lush writing, and the story is just fantastic. I kept turning page after page not only to immerse myself in Taylor's beautiful prose but also because this story is just compelling. I've reread this entire series, and I loved it even more the second time through.

For years, I used to walk past the statues of St. Wenceslaus, František Palacký, and other Czech national heroes without giving them much thought. After reading this book, I came to appreciate how much Prague’s monuments can tell us about the city’s history. Their creators offered a variety of interpretations over the meaning of “Czechness”, and these monuments have inspired passionate debates about nationhood and religion ever since. The book also made me think about ways that monuments can exclude others and inspire hatred, and not just in Prague. Consider, for example, statues celebrating the Confederacy erected by white supremacists decades after the end of the Civil War. Many still dot my part of the country.

Golem’s illustrations are certainly not detailed in the same way as the others on this list; the imagery in this retelling of the Golem of Prague story is composed entirely of colorful cut paper, layered and woven into bold, dynamic scenes. Whereas the first four books I’ve recommended invite hours of poring over worldbuilding detail and density of information, Golem compels readers to marvel over the construction of its illustrations. How does the golem pierce through the spidery paper web of paper smoke? How are the sheets stacked to imply depth and shadow? Is this seriously all paper?! 

The sources found in Collective Identities illustrate how national ideas were received, fashioned, and conveyed by thinkers in many parts of Europe during the modern era. Each volume also includes a number of opening essays and chapter introductions which provide helpful references to additional foundational texts and matters of historical context. In sum, the volumes perform the very valuable service of introducing readers to some common elements in many ‘discourses’ from the period as well as important local variations in style and content.

This is quite possibly the best nonfiction book I’ve read. I loved it so much that I traveled to the Spanish Riding School in Vienna to see the Lipizzaner horses in person, and listened to the audiobook for a second time while traveling. This one has it all: History, suspense, people who care about horses, horses. As a plus, if you’re into audiobooks, the narrator of The Perfect Horse, Paul Boehmer, is the perfect voice. I would listen to this guy read a laundry list all day long. Put him to the task of reading a truly important story like this one and you will be educated and entertained. I can’t say enough good things about this book.

Because of the enormous odds stacked against each movement of this sort, the story of every nonviolent leader has an unlikely element to it. But Vaclav Havel’s biography may be the most unlikely of all. A playwright, an intellectual, and, in his own words, a “bundle of nerves,” Havel nevertheless found himself leader of Czechoslovakia’s astonishing nonviolent Velvet Revolution in 1989, and soon after became the country’s first president following the fall of communism. A very human embodiment of humanist conviction, Havel’s life is one to study.

There are several books I could recommend written by adults who were imprisoned as children in Terezin during the war, but this one stands out because of its artwork interspersed with factual accounts of daily life. Indeed, it’s the factual perspective she takes in her descriptions that makes them so heart-wrenching. Her map was my primary tool in writing descriptions of the camp, and her artwork, imitating her writing style, comes across as stark and factual. Written as a diary, not a novel, I cried at the cruelty with which her life unfurled before her. At the same time, however, she manages to capture the beauty of being a child, full of hope and promise. That balance makes the book a jewel.