Velvet Retro


Book Description

Scholars of state socialism have frequently invoked “nostalgia” to identify an uncritical longing for the utopian ambitions and lived experience of the former Eastern Bloc. However, this concept seems insufficient to describe memory cultures in the Czech Republic and other contexts in which a “retro” fascination with the past has proven compatible with a steadfast critique of the state socialist era. This innovative study locates a distinctively retro aesthetic in Czech literature, film, and other cultural forms, enriching our understanding of not only the nation’s memory culture, but also the ways in which popular culture can structure collective memory.




Czech Modernism, 1900-1945


Book Description

Documentation of the Czech contribution to European modernism, bringing together essays by leading scholars, and exploring such art forms as painting, sculpture, writing, photography and film.




The Museum of Eterna's Novel


Book Description

An anti-novel.' It opens with more than fifty prologues-including ones addressed 'To My Authorial Persona,' 'To the Critics,' and 'To Readers Who Will Perish If They Don't Know What the Novel Is About'-that are by turns philosophical, outrageous, ponderous, and cryptic. These pieces cover a range of topics from how the upcoming novel will be received to how to thwart 'skip-around readers' (by writing a book that's defies linearity!). The novel itself, is about a group of characters (some borrowed from other texts) who live on an estancia called 'la novella''




Prague


Book Description

This catalogue accompanies the Fall 2005 exhibition that celebrates the flowering of art in medieval Prague, when the city became not only an imperial but also an intellectual and artistic capital of Europe. Scholars trace the distinctly Bohemian art that developed during the reigns of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV and his sons; the artistic achievements of master craftsmen; and the rebuilding of Prague Castle and of Saint Vitus' Cathedral. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.




The Other City


Book Description

A hymn to the invisible 'other' Prague, lurking on the peripheries of the town so familiar to tourists.




The Devil's Workshop


Book Description

'The devil had his workshop here in Belarus. The deepest graves are in Belarus. But nobody knows about them' A young boy grows up in Terezn - an infamous fortress town with a sinister past. Together with his friends he plays happily in this former Nazi prison, scouting the tunnels for fragments of history under the careful eye of one of its survivors, Uncle Lebo, until one day there is an accident, and he is forced to leave. Returning to Terezn many years later, he joins Lebo's campaign to preserve the town, but before long the authorities impose a brutal crack-down, chaos ensues, and the narrator finds himself fleeing to Belarus, where fresh horrors drive him ever closer to the evils he had hoped to escape. Bold, brilliant and blackly comic, The Devil's Workshop paints a deeply troubling portrait of two countries dealing with their ghosts and asks: at what point do we consign the past to history?




All This Belongs to Me


Book Description

"Alta, Zaya, Nara, Oyuna and Dolgorna - a mother, three sisters, and the teenage daughter of one of the sisters - each tell their pieces of the family story, an epic fraught with secrets and betrayals, in All This Belongs to Me, the debut novel of Petra Hulova." "All This Belongs to Me transports the reader from Mongolia's harsh, dusty steppe to the clamor and grime of the capital, Ulaanbantar; from nomanic herding and felt tents to brothels and prefab apartment blocks. With a filmic eye and a dead-on ear, Hulova vividly conveys the landscapes and lives of three generations of women. Two of the sisters, born illegitimately of their mother's clandestine affairs with foreigners - one Chinese, one Russian - struggle with the stigma of being half-breeds, while the strict division of male and female labor and social roles plays out in the city and country alike, with devastating consequences." --Book Jacket.