Postcards from Absurdistan

A sweeping history of a twentieth-century Prague torn between fascism, communism, and democracy¿with lessons for a world again threatened by dictatorshipPostcards from Absurdistan is a cultural history of Prague from 1938, when the Nazis destroyed Czechoslovakia¿s artistically vibrant liberal democracy, to 1989, when the country¿s socialist regime collapsed after more than four decades of communist party rule. Derek Sayer shows that Prague¿s 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 Praguers¿poets and politicians, architects and athletes, journalists and filmmakers,