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[excerpt]
book view
forthcoming :
The Prague Triptych
also by the author & translator:
The Last Bell
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house of the nine devils
Selected Bohemian Tales
by Johannes Urzidil
translated from the German by David Burnett
Collected here and translated into English for the first time
are some of the most renowned Bohemian stories from Prague native Johannes Urzidil,
a long-neglected writer whose short fiction herein spans centuries, from the bygone mythical Prague of alchemists to the late Habsburg metropolis
where ethnic tensions seethed under a genteel veneer to the terror-filled days of Nazi occupation and a desperate flight to safety. Bearing his
trademark wisdom, empathy, and wit, the writing often blurs the border between reportage, memoir, and fiction, such as an encounter with Gavrilo
Princip, wasting away in the Terezín prison after his assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, or a WWI soldier trying to evade military police
and thus disrupting a night at Café Arco, a favorite haunt of the Prague Circle that included Brod, Kafka, and Werfel, as well as Urzidil, the group’s
youngest member and one of the last links to that symbiotic milieu of Prague German-Jewish artists.
The most erudite of all Prague German writers, his mastery consists not least of all in his ability to tell a story while politely concealing his erudition.
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— Peter Demetz
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The particular charm of Urzidil’s fiction lies in the warmth and charisma of his narrators,
effortlessly spinning entertaining tales. Gathered together, the stories collected here do,
as intended, read like a loose memoir recounted with a healthy measure of creative license.
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— roughghosts
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ISBN 9788086264608
198 pp., 135 x 190 mm
hardcover with ribbon bookmark
fiction : short stories
publication:
UK/Europe: September 2022
US/Canada: November 2022
order directly:
airmail shipping & handling incl.
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