The Book of Prague

An ex-con on compassionate release revisits his old haunts, only to feel dispossessed by how much the city has changed. The son of political dissidents in Soviet-era Prague is condemned to a life of menial jobs, like working at a local abattoir, unable to imagine his prospects ever improving. A young shop assistant in a tourist-friendly antique shop imagines what Prague would now look like if Czechoslovakia had stood up to the Nazis. The stories collected in this anthology show Prague to be a city of myriad layers and multiple histories. Famous for its untouched, Gothic and Baroque architecture and its trapped-in-aspic charm, it is also a place that has lived through numerous traumas over the last century and learned to conceal its scars, perhaps a little too well. Just as its landmarks should be preserved, so should these hidden histories, and sometimes the best place to preserve them is in stories. Translated by Alz beta Belá nová, Geoffrey Chew, Melvyn Clarke, Graeme Dibble, Paul Kaye, Andrew Oakland, Justin Quinn, Julia and Peter Sherwood, Paul Wilson and Alex Zucker. Supported by the Czech Literary Centre and the Moravian Library.