Ivana Myšková and Jan Zikmund (eds.) – The Book of Prague (Comma Press, 2023)
Prague is a city of beautiful contradictions. More than anywhere else in Europe it demonstrates that old, ever-productive, ever-neurotic European trap: a longing for and resentment of a past which is ever-present, neither deniable nor fully acceptable. Generations of artists have shaped the city, its architecture, its art, its literature, by systematically breaking with a past that they are drawn back into, integrated with, before even a generation has gone by.
What is new in America is brand new. China, the same. What is new in Europe is bohemian; a product of Old Bohemia, a pageantry of old styles worn in new ways with new meanings.
Where else can medieval and baroque, art nouveau and sixties counterculture, communism, brutalism, modernism, Franz Kafka and the golem all squat there, atop the mind, in such careful balance?
The Book of Prague – the latest in Comma Press’ Cities series – brings the city to life in all its vibrancy and complexity. Myšková and Zikmund have gathered a selection of stories varied in both style and subject matter. They span a period from late communism through to the post-Velvet Revolution years and up to Prague’s contemporary status as one of the tourism capitals of the world.
The stories range from the strange to the sentimental. On the one side, we have Michal Ajvaz’s “A Summer Night”, in which a trip to St Vitus’ Cathedral is rudely interrupted by a gigantic clam that proceeds to chase the protagonist across the castle complex before cornering him on a tram.
On the other side, we have Veronika Bendová’s “Waiting for Patrik”; a stream-of-consciousness day-in-the-life type story whose protagonist is forever rushed off her feet. Its careful contrasting of small annoyances and reverie perfectly capture life in a frantic, over-populated city. From the foreigner who puts their bags in the space on the tram reserved for dogs, to the man who asks her on a date who she is disappointed to learn is not a priest.
One feels the city changing. In Bohumil Hrabal’s “My Libeň”, his poor but precious childhood lingers on in memory as he watches bulldozers tear apart the old city blocks.
In Patrik Banga’s “Žižkovite” the tone is more bitter. The violent suburb – “a city unto itself” – was once home to a fusion culture, where musicians like the protagonists Romani father could play with those from other communities even if the streets weren’t safe. But the Communists tore up the Jewish cemetery to build the TV tower, and property tycoons bought up the flats after the revolution and kicked out the Romani living there; driving most of them away to the slums of poorer cities.
But Banga is proud of Žižkov all the same. True love, for places as for people, survives the initial romance and the later disillusion alike; reaching, through contrast of lightest light and darkest dark, a full depth of understanding.
What is pleasing about the collection is the number of stories gathered there that aren’t about a specific location, but instead a feeling of place. Simona Bohatá’s “Everyone Has Their Reasons” deals with the lives of jailbirds and ex-jailbirds, jumping between prison and a riverside chop shop. Jan Zábrana’s “A Memory” takes us through his communist-era workplaces, Petr Borkovec’s “The Captain’s Christmas Eve”, into a nursing home. Marie Stryjová’s “Blue” is a stripped-back, dialogue-driven scene between two lovers, perhaps former lovers, that could, I suppose, be set anywhere in the world, but works so well, in the mind’s eye, in one of Prague’s many riverside parks.
Although the collection does not include any writers from the circle around Equus Press (Manchester Review of Books’ favourite among the Prague small presses), Marek Šindelka’s “Realities” is a piece working very much within the same contemporary countercultural tradition. It’s angry, funny, cynical; pulling itself apart as a literary object, lashing out at everything within reach. “800,000 Jews died in Treblinka alone,” says one character, unable to conceive of such devastation: “that’s like the whole of Slavoj Žižek’s Facebook following,” replies an anarchist – perhaps joking, perhaps not…
The Book of Prague offers something for all readers and, at a slim 120 pages, makes an ideal travelling companion for a long weekend in the mother of cities.
– Joe Darlington
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