“One only has to be a few days in Prague before fully realizing the genius of Kafka. The air is impregnated with his spirit. Thirty years ago he wrote of everything that has happened here and is happening today. It is a town that is locked and has only the wrong keys, the keys that won’t fit the locks; things are not ruined and spoiled so much as banked.” ~Cecil Beaton, The Parting Years, 1964

NONFICTION

The Coasts of Bohemi: A Czech History, Derek Sayer, 1998 — A cultural and political history of the Czech people by a Canadian professor.

Exit into History: A Journey through the New Eastern Europe, Eva Hoffman, 1994 — Hoffman recounts her travels across Eastern Europe following the fall of communism.

The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague, Timothy Garton Ash, 1993 — An account by a British journalist of the fall of communism, which he witnessed first hand: He was actually standing next to Vaclav Havel in Wencelas Square on the eve of his assuming power.

Nightfrost in Prague: the End of Humane Socialism, Zdenek Mlynar, 1980 — An account of Prague Spring by a close ally of Dubcek’s who was later transferred to Russia where he was closely monitored by the KGB.

Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka, Ernst Pawel, 1984 — A biography of Franz Kafka, Prague’s most famous literary figure.

Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965-1990, Vaclav Havel, 1992 — A broad collection of writings by the former president of the Czech Republic, who turned from a playwright to a dissident and then an inspirational leader for Eastern Europe.

Prague Farewell, Heda Magolius Kovaly, 1988 — This memoir is no longer in print but well worth checking out of the library if you can. It tells the story of a woman who escaped a Nazi concentration camp, survived her husband’s execution in the 1950s and witnessed the Soviet tanks roll into Prague.

Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City, Peter Demetz, 1997 — A Prague native who left in 1949 and became a Yale literature professor returned to his birthplace after the Velvet Revolution, and researched this unsentimental portrait of the city.

Prague Pictures: A Portrait of the City, John Banville, 2003 — Recollection of the city’s past and present.

The Spirit of Prague, Ivan Klima, 1998 — The essay collection explores totalitarianism’s inner logic and workings.

Kafka’s Prauge: A Travel Reader. Ed. Klaus Wagenbach, 1996 — A walking tour of Prague built around places of importance to the city’s most famous native author.

FICTION

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera, 1999 — Milan Kundera’s sexy, innovative masterpiece about the disappearance and reappearance of Czechoslovakia.

The Cowards, Josef Skvorecky, 1972 — The story of an uncomplicated, talented youth caught up in momentous historic events who refuses to be bored to death by politics—or to lie down and die without a fight.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera, 1984 — Set first in Czechoslovakia, then in Switzerland, Kundera’s story tells the sometimes laborious story of a womanizing Czech surgeon forced to flee the Russian invasion and take on menial roles.

Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light, Ivan Klima, 1994 — A novel about the Velvet Revolution

Utz, Bruce Chatwin, 1988 — A novel by one of the century’s best travel writers, this story is set in Prague about Kaspar Utz, a collector of Meissen porcelain, who hides his treasure through World War II and the Soviet era.