The most recommended books about Prague

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.

Philip Kerr’s series of books about Berlin detective Bernie Gunther is a stunning achievement. The series weaves together the often disturbing history of the Third Reich, real-life characters such as Goebbels and Goering, and a sharp-minded and blunt-speaking detective everyman who is trying to survive the maelstrom around him with morals and life intact. Prague Fatale sets Gunther unto solve murders at a house party of high-ranking Nazis at Heydrich’s rural retreat. It’s a grim twist on cosy, country house murders.

There are so many reasons to love this book.

First, the main character is compelling–intelligent, strong, flawed, and courageous. Second, excellent research takes you into the difficult politics of medieval Europe, the tensions between religions, and the madness of European Courts. Third, it takes you into the dark world of medieval alchemists and their dangerous competition to find the Philosopher's Stone.

The crimes make your skin crawl. I also love it because my very own detective, Doctor John Dee, is ever present but never seen.

This is a really compelling book, technically a novel that reads like narrative nonfiction. It’s the story of the Czechoslovakian operation to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, director of the Gestapo and a man so evil he stood out for it even among the Nazis. It’s also the story of the men charged with carrying out that mission and Heydrich’s life leading up to his arrival in Prague. Along with all that, it’s the story of how Laurent Binet researched and wrote the book. 

I admit I was skeptical about the meta aspect when this book was recommended to me; it felt like it could be distracting or too on the nose. I was pleased to find that it usually used that device well, letting Binet address uncertainty in the official record, critique other works on the same subject, or introduce asides that are interesting in their own right. But the central… show more.

I read somewhere that Franz Kafka would laugh so loud when writing his stories that he woke up his neighbors. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I get it. It’s not what is commonly thought of when someone talks about Kafka’s stories. I mean, his name has come to mean a certain style. “Kafkaesque” is used to describe stories that are absurd, nightmarish, offensive, and heavy with bureaucratic pretentiousness and deceit.

Where is the humor? Oh, it’s there. I think sometimes readers get caught up in the horror and bizarreness of it all that they miss the subtle, absurdist, dark, and very dry humor dripping in all these stories in this collection.

A laugh-out-loud funny book about an American scam artist looking for marks on the streets of Prague.

Posing as a successful Hollywood screenwriter, Nix swindles female tourists, but ends up stealing from the wrong woman as it attracts the attention of the woman’s fiancé, a local detective, whose soon sets his sight on Nix. When Nix spots a sultry young woman at the train station, he thinks he’s found his next victim, but she leads him on, then cleans him out. 

Thinking the two could be an unbeatable pair together, Nix tracks Monika down, but accidentally kills her pimp. The two team up, and Monika draws Nix deep into her web of lies. The book is filled with clever dialogue and two nihilistic characters, who will shock, fascinate, and entertain.

The book uses verse to create a modern-day fairy tale, mixing magic with contemporary Prague. This makes magic feel so close and tangible for us as readers.

Because of this, we believe our protagonist Ilana and sympathise with her as she makes friends with the ghost of a Jewish boy from decades ago, and fights the hold of the strange and charismatic Wasserman, who has the ability to make the memory of children disappear.

Despite its magical appearance, this story still tackles compelling real-world issues of racism, war, and diaspora in a compelling way.

Szalay sort of exposes—in the most subtle of ironic ways—how men delude themselves with respect to their intentions, their character, their attitudes towards work and women, and all the concomitant notions of competition contained therein.

He's got, it seems to me, a quite Hobbesian worldview going—and that, to me, is refreshing! Of course the writing is for the most part beautiful; but not too beautiful, not too embellished. A bit plangent. A bit lapidary.

One thing I would say is, reading him, I am sometimes tempted to cut the last sentence of his chapters. He often ends with a note, as it were, that strikes me as bathetic. I wonder if in some way he doesn't trust the reader. 

Cutting the last sentence:  that's an old New Yorker magazine trick and I think—even though this may sound presumptuous—his prose'd benefit… show more.

Indians on Vacation follows husband and wife Bird and Mimi, a First Nations couple, as they travel from Canada to Europe following the discovery of a trove of old postcards from Mimi's late uncle Leroy, who absconded with a valuable family heirloom 100 years earlier but never returned.

This book was laugh-out-loud funny, leavened by King’s sly wit. But as Bird and Mimi traverse Budapest, Prague, and other capitals, encountering refugees and failed political systems, it forced me to think about the political world we have created and what compassion really means. 

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.