Description

Postcards from Absurdistan is a cultural and political history of Prague from 1938 when the Nazis destroyed Czechoslovakias artistically vibrant liberal democracy to 1989 when the countrys socialist regime collapsed after more than four decades of communist dictatorship Derek Sayer shows that Pragues twentieth century far from being a story of inexorable progress toward some end of history whether fascist communist or democratic was a tragicomedy of recurring nightmares played out in a land Czech dissidents dubbed Absurdistan Situated in the eye of the storms that shaped the modern world Prague holds up an unsettling mirror to the absurdities and dangers of our own times

In a brilliant narrative Sayer weaves a vivid montage of the lives of individual Praguerspoets and politicians architects and athletes journalists and filmmakers artists musicians and comedianscaught up in the crosscurrents of the turbulent half century following the Nazi invasion This is the territory of the ideologist the collaborator the informer the apparatchik the dissident the outsider the torturer and the refugeenot to mention the innocent bystander who is always looking the other way and Vclav Havels greengrocer whose knowing complicity allows the show to go on Prague exposes modernitys dream worlds of progress as confections of kitsch