Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
on all major sights, and good cultural and historical background.
English editions are sold in Europe at gas stations and tourist
shops. The encyclopedic Blue Guides are dry but just right for
scholarly types.
The Eyewitness series is popular for great, easy-to-grasp
graphics and photos, 3-D cutaways of buildings, aerial-view maps
of historic neighborhoods, and cultural background. But written
content in Eyewitness is relatively skimpy, and the topics weigh a
ton. I simply borrow them for a minute from other travelers at cer-
tain sights to make sure that I'm aware of that place's highlights.
The Time Out
travel guide to Prague provides good, detailed
coverage, particularly on arts and entertainment.
Recommended Books and Movies
Czech children, adults, and grandparents delight in telling sto-
ries. In Czech fairy tales, there are no dwarfs and monsters. Czech
writers invented the robot, the pistol, and Black Light Theater (an
absurd show of illusion, puppetry, mime, and modern dance).
The most famous Czech literary figure is the title character of
Jaroslav Hašek's
Good Soldier Švejk,
who frustrates the World War
I Austro-Hungarian army he serves by cleverly playing dumb.
Bohumil Hrabal, writing in a stream-of-consciousness style,
mixed tales he had heard in pubs from sailors, self-made philoso-
phers, and kind-hearted prostitutes into enchanting fictions that
express the Czech spirit and sense of humor better than any other
work—the best are
I Served the King of England,
he Town Where
Time Stood Still,
and
Too Loud a Solitude
. (Jiří Menzel turned
some of Hrabal's writings into films, the most famous of which
is the Oscar-winning
Closely Watched Trains
—for more on Czech
cinema, keep reading.)
Other well-known Czech writers include Václav Havel
(playwright who went on to become Czechoslovakia's first post-
communist president—he authored many essays and plays, includ-
ing
he Garden Party
); Milan Kundera (author of
The Unbearable
Lightness of Being,
set during the “Prague Spring” uprising); and
Karel Čapek (novelist and playwright who created the robot in the
play
R.U.R.
).
But the most famous Czech writer of all is the existential-
ist great, Franz Kaf ka, a Prague Jew who wrote in German about
a person turning into a giant cockroach
(The Metamorphosis)
and
an urbanite being pursued and persecuted for crimes he knows
nothing about
(The Trial).
Some lesser-known Czech writers are also worth discovering.
Arnošt Lustig's
Dita Saxová
covers the fate of Czech Jews during
the war, while Ota Pavel's
Golden Eels
and Josef Škvorecký's
he
Cowards (Zbabělci)
describe the world of a generation coming of
