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[ excerpt ]
book view
also by the author and translator:
House of the Nine Devils
The Last Bell
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prague triptych
by Johannes Urzidil
translated from the German by David Burnett
Structured as a winged altarpiece, Prague Triptych is written in Urzidil’s characteristic blend of fact, fiction, and memoir
to create a mosaic of his native city. The centerpiece is the novella-length “Weissenstein Karl,” a Švejk-like palavering denizen of Café Arco
who sits and converses with Franz Werfel, Max Brod, Franz Kafka, Ernst Pollak (and his wife-to-be Milena Jesenská) and all the
other writers known as the Prague Circle. Through the eyes of his subjects, Urzidil takes us from Prague’s earliest history and lore through
the Thirty Years’ War with its multiple defenestrations, to fin-de-siècle ferment and the uneasy cohabitation between Czechs, Germans,
and Jews over the final decades of Habsburg rule, and ultimately to the period immediate following WWI in an independent Czechoslovakia.
This journey is capped with a final, dreamlike farewell to his city as the iron curtain descends like a theater curtain to signal the end
of the performance and the darkening of the stage that had been graced by those he once knew.
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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ISBN 9788088628064
229 pp., 135 x 195 mm
softcover with flaps
fiction / memoir
publication:
UK/Europe: July 2026
US/Canada: November 2026
pre-order directly:
airmail shipping & handling incl.
will ship in July
or order from:
Bookshops
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e-book
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