This history of Czech culture is unusual, refreshing and very
readable. The title alludes to Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, in
which the landlocked Bohemia is given a coastline - a famous and,
to the Czechs, typical example of foreign ignorance. Although the
former Kingdom of Bohemia lies at the very centre of Europe, the
region has long been overlooked, stereotyped, or completely
misunderstood, right up to the most recent years of our history.
Drawing on an enormous array of literature, musical, visual and
documentary sources - from bank notes to statues, museum displays
to school textbooks, murals in subway stations to changing street
names - Sayer looks much further that the history of kings and
wars, exploring the fundamental contribution of Czech artistic,
literary and political developments to the past, present and future
of European culture. Beautifully written, this is an impressive and
vivacious read. (Kirkus UK)
In "The Winter's Tale," Shakespeare gave the landlocked country
of Bohemia a coastline--a famous and, to Czechs, typical example of
foreigners' ignorance of the Czech homeland. Although the lands
that were once the Kingdom of Bohemia lie at the heart of Europe,
Czechs are usually encountered only in the margins of other
people's stories. In "The Coasts of Bohemia," Derek Sayer reverses
this perspective. He presents a comprehensive and long-needed
history of the Czech people that is also a remarkably original
history of modern Europe, told from its uneasy center.
Sayer shows that Bohemia has long been a theater of European
conflict. It has been a cradle of Protestantism and a bulwark of
the Counter-Reformation; an Austrian imperial province and a
proudly Slavic national state; the most easterly democracy in
Europe; and a westerly outlier of the Soviet bloc. The complexities
of its location have given rise to profound (and often profoundly
comic) reflections on the modern condition. Franz Kafka, Jaroslav
Hasek, Karel Capek and Milan Kundera are all products of its spirit
of place. Sayer describes how Bohemia's ambiguities and
contradictions are those of Europe itself, and he considers the
ironies of viewing Europe, the West, and modernity from the vantage
point of a country that has been too often ignored.
"The Coasts of Bohemia" draws on an enormous array of literary,
musical, visual, and documentary sources ranging from banknotes to
statues, museum displays to school textbooks, funeral orations to
operatic stage-sets, murals in subway stations to censors' indexes
of banned books. It brings us into intimate contact with the ever
changing details of daily life--the street names and facades of
buildings, the heroes figured on postage stamps--that have created
and recreated a sense of what it is to be Czech. Sayer's sustained
concern with questions of identity, memory, and power place the
book at the heart of contemporary intellectual debate. It is an
extraordinary story, beautifully told.
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