Angelo Maria Ripellino

Attempting to go beyond the cliche of Prague as the golden city , this book brings out all its mystery, ambiguity, gloom, lethargy and hidden fascination. More than a literary and cultural history of Prague, this book seeks to be both a celebration and requiem for an oppressed culture.

Magic Prague

As the book opens, Kafka and Hasek are still stalking the streets of the Old Town, chatting with their characters Josef K. and Josef Svejk. And on we go, through Prague's bordellos, theatres, alchemists' laboratories, cafes, and ghetto, with everyone from Rudolf II to Apollinaire and the Czech dadaists for company. The result of this imaginary guided tour is a deeper knowledge of the city than any conventional guidebook might provide and an introduction to Czech culture as intellectually rigorous as it is exhilarating.

Majakovskij e il teatro russo d'avanguardia

'A superb, haunting, clotted mad masterpiece.'- John Banville, The Observer This unique cultural history attempts to go beyond the tourist clich of Prague as the 'golden city' to bring out all the mystery, ambiguity, gloom, lethargy and hidden fascination of the city on the Vltava. Ripellino slips into the style of melodrama and ghost stories, the anecdotes of the enchanted traveller and the outlandish bad taste of beer-teller tales to bring out the sorcery of the Bohemian capital in a mixture of fact and fiction.

Angelo Maria Ripellino

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