Mapped
The Good Soldier Švejk
Jaroslav Hašek
Hašek's great comic novel follows the imperturbable Josef Švejk, whose blank-faced obedience makes a mockery of the Austro-Hungarian army, from his arrest in a Prague pub through the bungled machinery of the First World War toward a front he never quite reaches. The route is real Bohemia: the tavern U Kalicha where it starts, the garrison at České Budějovice, the famous 'anabasis' on foot around the South Bohemian villages, and the training camp at Bruck an der Leitha before the troop trains east.
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera
Kundera's Prague is a city under occupation and the memory of it: Tomas and Tereza love, quarrel and photograph the streets while Soviet-led tanks roll into Wenceslas Square in August 1968. The map holds the old core on both banks of the Vltava, from the square and the Old Town across Charles Bridge to the wooded rise of Petřín and the open plain of Letná, before the story leaves for exile in Zurich and a last retreat into the Bohemian countryside.
6 places →