The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History - Softcover

Sayer, Derek

Softcover

ISBN 10: 069105052X ISBN 13: 9780691050522

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2000

Synopsis

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 stamp

About this title

Review:

"This is a beautifully written cultural history of the Czech people. There is no comparable work available in English, and certainly not one of such sensitivity and breadth."--Andrew Lass, Mount Holyoke College

"A rich and intricate story.... Excellent ... the most stimulating introduction to [its] subject available in English, or ... any other language."---R.J.W. Evans, New York Review of Books

"A masterful essay on the ironies and tragedies of both the cultural history of the Czechs and Czech culture's history of its own past."---Steven Beller, The Times Literary Supplement

"[Derek Sayer's The Coasts of Bohemia] is an ambitious, elegantly written, and sympathetic account of the art, the literature and the politics of the Czech people.... Sayer saunters gracefully and with sure footing back and forth across centuries of Czech religion, mythology, and history, displaying enthusiasm and engagement but immune to the usual self-serving national illusions.... His book is a delight."---Tony Judt, The New Republic

"Sayer's penetrating and balanced discussion of Czech political and cultural history should spare us from ever again thinking of the central European place as 'a far away country'."---Stan Persky, Vancouver Sun

"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1998"

From the Author:

Other reviews of The Coasts of Bohemia
From The Financial Times (London):...Derek Sayer's book, a history of the Czechs since their conversion to Christianity in the ninth century, serves as a thoroughly effective rebuttal to Engels and a stern post factum rebuke to Chamberlain. Written rather more from a cultural than a political perspective, the book notes that the greatest ever Czech reference work, a 28-volume encyclopedia published between 1888 and 1909, was second in its day, in terms of numbers of entries and illustrations, only to the Encyclopedia Britannica...As Sayer illustrates, and as Engels and Chamberlain should have known, the Czechs were responsible for constructing one of Europe's most advanced medieval polities. permanent integration into the western world.. But the temptation should be resisted to portray the Czech past as one long national pilgrimage from Jan Hus to Vaclav Havel. If history were that simple, there would be no need for books as discerning and thought-provoking as Sayer's. (Tony Barber, "The language of national identity denied," March 28, 1998)

From Publishers Weekly:...Sayer doesn't fall into the many traps awaiting cultural histories: he weaves individuals into the larger story, doesn't give in to nationalistic boosterism and doesn't make the messy unnecessarily clean. In readable but never condescending prose, Sayer tries to balance the multiplicity of art forms (although the performing arts do take second place to literature and the visual arts) to show how the Czechs constructed their identity...Lively and intelligent, it will appeal to the legions of Americans visiting (or settling in) Prague, as well as to anyone who wants to know about the culture that nurtured Kafka, Smetana, Karel Capek, Alfons Mucha, Josef Skvorecky, Dvorak and others. (Starred review, April 1998).

From Novy Domov (Czech newspaper, Toronto):

Autor je cesky profesor sociologie na University of Alberta v Edmontonu. Na temer 450 strankach zajimave podava dulezite useky z historie ceskeho naroda--od sv. Vaclava po Bilou horu, tristaletou porobu, obrozeni a rozkvet ceskeho pisemnictvi 19. a 20. stoleti. Je to idealni zdroj pouceni o nasich dejinach pro Cechy i cechofily ctouci anglicky. Kniha se setkala s velice priznivym kritickym ohlasem. (Zdena Salivarova, 6. June 1998)

Translation: The author is a Czech professor of sociology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Over almost 450 pages he engagingly presents important junctures from the history of the Czech nation--from Saint Vaclav through the White Mountain, the three hundred years of subjugation, the [national] revival and the flowering of Czech literature in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is an ideal source of knowledge about our history for Czechs as well as for English-speaking Czechophiles. The book has met with a very favorable critical response.

Mockrat dekuji pani Salivarove za recenzi, a take za poklonu -- ale Cech rozhodne nejsem! Svoji cestinu si neustale zdokonaluji. Jsem Anglican, zijici v Kanade v poslednich letech. Mam ale ceskou manzelku, Alenu, ktera prelozila vsechno z cestiny v knize, a bez ktere bych nemohl takovou knihu napsat vubec.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 069105052X
• ISBN 13: 9780691050522
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 462