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Prague Pictures: Portraits of a City by John Banville (Hardcover, 2016)

From one of the foremost chroniclers of the modern European experience, a panoramic view of a city that has seduced and bewitched visitors for centuries. Prague is the magic capital of Europe. It has been a place of mystery and intrigue since the days of Emperor Rudolf II, who in the late 1500s summoned alchemists and magicians from all over the world to his castle on Hradeany hill. Wars, revolutions, floods, the imposition of Soviet communism, and even the depredations of the tourist boom after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 could not destroy the unique atmosphere of this beautiful, proud, and melancholy city on the Vltava. In this fascinating exploration of a city he loves, celebrated Irish novelist John Banville weaves together stories of Prague past and present. He traces Prague's often tragic history and portrays the people who made it: the emperors and princes, geniuses and charlatans, heroes and scoundrels. He also paints a portrait of the city as he grew to know it, from his first visit in the depths of the Cold War to the eve of the Czech Republic's accession into the European Union at the start of the new millennium. Banville brings the city to vivid life with a colorful tapestry of the people he met, the friends he made, the places he came to know in The City of a Hundred Spires. The fourth book in Bloomsbury's Writer and the City series.

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