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    Prague: A Novel
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    Prague: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Prague: A Novel
    Ebook696 pages11 hours

    Prague: A Novel

    By Arthur Phillips

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    BONUS: This edition contains excerpts from Arthur Phillips's The Tragedy of Arthur, The Song Is You, The Egyptologist, and Angelica.

    A first novel of startling scope and ambition, Prague depicts an intentionally lost Lost Generation as it follows five American expats who come to Budapest in the early 1990s to seek their fortune—financial, romantic, and spiritual—in an exotic city newly opened to the West. They harbor the vague suspicion that their counterparts in Prague, where the atmospheric decay of post–Cold War Europe is even more cinematically perfect, have it better. Still, they hope to find adventure, inspiration, a gold rush, or history in the making. What they actually find is a deceptively beautiful place that they often fail to understand. What does it mean to fret about your fledgling career when the man across the table was tortured by two different regimes? How does your short, uneventful life compare to the lives of those who actually resisted, fought, and died? What does your angst mean in a city still pocked with bullet holes from war and crushed rebellion?

    Journalist John Price finds these questions impossible to answer yet impossible to avoid, though he tries to forget them in the din of Budapest’ s nightclubs, in a romance with a secretive young diplomat, at the table of an elderly cocktail pianist, and in the moody company of a young man obsessed with nostalgia. Arriving in Budapest one spring day to pursue his elusive brother, John finds himself pursuing something else entirely, something he can’t quite put a name to, something that will draw him into stories much larger than himself.

    With humor, intelligence, masterly prose, and profound affection for both Budapest and his own characters, Arthur Phillips not only captures his contemporaries but also brilliantly renders the Hungary of past and present: the generations of failed revolutionaries and lyric poets, opportunists and profiteers, heroes and storytellers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateSep 17, 2002
    ISBN9781588362834
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Prague

    3/5

    259 ratings16 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Less than two weeks after I read this novel I was crossing the Danube with the woman I would soon marry. Happenstance, possibly, but the trepidation felt in the novel on the Chain Bridge was echoed in my own experience.

      There is thus an aspect of Arthur Phillips which I would love to thank for distilling such a moment, allowing it to suspend and pulse, thus securing it in my mind on that sunny Hungarian afternoon.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this! It started slow for me but picked up around the halfway point. I was sort of an ex-pat in another eastern European country around this time so I felt like I could relate to the characters and the setting, which probably helped. I did not feel this was quite as excellent a read as The Egyptologist, but I enjoyed it significantly more than Angelica, which are the other Arthur Phillips books I have read.
    • 4/5
      Even the title is genius. About ex-pats in Budapest who wish they were hip enough to be living in Prague.
    • 5/5
      Prague is a novel about sincerity and the lack of it in personal and historical nostalgia. Phillips develops his characters artfully to illustrate deception in their dealings with each other and with key players in post cold war Budapest. The problem the expatriates have in the old city is the suspicion that their insight into emotions and behavior is insincere. They have lived personal fictions for so much of their young adult lives that self deception causes them to miss the reality of current events. This leads them to underestimate the local residents and humiliate themselves in the presence of the Magyar. Cynicism and irony become parameters of the characters’ existence and all they can look forward to are rueful reminiscences of their short time in Budapest. This nostalgia may take the form of the phony surrealism of the borderline personality photographer Nicky creating superficially shocking collages, or the true surrealism of emotionally surprising and haunting oral myths created by Nadja the ancient piano player in a run down jazz club. The decision is up to the reader in this very good first novel.
    • 5/5
      An outstanding tome dedicated to Budapest. A city which is smattered with reminders of its past – both the distant royal past and the not-so-distant Communist era past – and indicators of its growing status as a city of culture and business. The way he writes of nostalgia and future-longing is exceptionally mesmerising. While focused on a number of American and Canadian expats with Hungarian heritage, what this really is is a thrilling biography for Budapest herself.
    • 3/5
      This complex novel gives insight into the lives of five young Americans living in Budapest in the 1990's. I decided to read it due to a recent interest I have found with Americans living in Paris during that Golden Age of the 1920's. I had also heard Phillips compared to Kundera, one of my top three favorite authors. "Prague" is intricate, with a great many things going on, contrasting and interesting characters, and a wide span and understanding of human nature in general. I appreciated its complexity, and I can certainly see how people could compare this work to Kundera's novels. In a typically Kundera-esque chapter, the author veers off randomly from the story as a character walks by an old house. Here, the author leaves the character to continue walking by without us, and switches to the story of the house - detailing its inhabitants and their lives from the 1800's. Eventually, it vaguely tied back into the story, but it was a stretch. Kundera can do these things effortlessly, beautifully, but here, it felt forced and detached. The writing was deep and philosophical, but not powerful enough to ever inspire any strong emotions toward any characters or events in this book.Also, the setting of Budapest never really came across to the reader. The city was not absolutely essential to the story, as I felt it should have been.I would be open to reading more of Arthur Phillips' work, as I can see that he is a talented, intellectual writer, but this one just never pulled me in.
    • 4/5
      Arthur Phillips is hot. That's enough for me. Plus, I like expat novels.
    • 4/5
      Even the title is genius. About ex-pats in Budapest who wish they were hip enough to be living in Prague.
    • 4/5
      This is a serious book. It forces the reader to read carefully and analyze what life is like in a foreign country undergoing transition from repression to freedom. It shows how Americans look to the rest of the world through the lives of five Generation-X expatriates who treat their adopted country with derision and play games with the truth.Through Phillips' artful writing, I became aware of a city in recovery filled with jazz clubs and coffee shops where the Hungarians were annoyed by the foreigners working in Budapest and the expats were equally annoyed by the tourists. I'd never thought much about Hungary before reading this book, but ended up admiring how the people bore up under the tyranny of Communism. Phillips reveals the past through the family history of the Horvath Publishing Company from 1808 until the time in 1990 when Imre Horvath enters the story lending a touch of integrity. He was a welcome contrast to the expats who were full of the self-absorbed ignorance of youth. They began to believe the invented stories they told each other until they simply tired of one another and sought truth and meaning for their lives as they went their separate ways.This book is full of hypocrisy and irony that begins with the title. I felt slightly cheated by the bait-and-switch ploy. Prague is the city on a hill while Budapest is reality. Just as the quintet of main characters try so hard to be cosmopolitan and end up looking like imposters, Prague remains an idealized longing, while Budapest proves to be a place of substance. Even though we never get to Prague in the book, I'm glad I learned this lesson from Budapest..."It's all a game and the winners are those who can tell serious from not." (Pg. 366) This is a promising first book from a winning author, and I'll eagerly read the three other books he has published since this 2002 debut.
    • 5/5
      First, this book is certainly something that is well-written and thought through. People compare it to Joyce and although I might not go that far, it is definitely worth the time. Second, I think it is so well written I will be writing my Senior thesis (UG) on this book over the course of the next academic year. Needless to say, this is not a beach read. It makes you think.Just having come back from studying in France for a year this book really made me reflect on my own experiences and those of the characters. I agree with some of the other reviewers who say the characters are "self-involved" (although not apply this notion to all expats because that's a really overly broad generalization). These characters are caught up their personal histories tangled with the history of the city in which they live. The connection Phillips makes between the two is the focus of my thesis--there is a lot of "meat" to this book. The beginning scene of the game is a very witty introduction to the characters where it sets a tone for what will follow--how much can we trust the characters? Where is the line between a truth and a lie? And how does memory and nostaglia affect this line? Why do we desire to be somewhere else, always glancing over to greener grass? Those are just a few of the questions that Phillips raises to the reader. About midway or so into the book, there is a seemingly annoying tangent about a publishing company and the family involved in it. At times it seems pointless but once you get through that part, Phillips brings the narrative together into a cohesive and thoughtful finish. I personally had no trouble getting through this part as I found it quite interesting to hear the fictional history about the industry in which I work. If you find yourself struggling through this part, continue through. It is worth it.Overall, I would highly recommend this book (accompanied with a nice big glass of red wine).
    • 5/5
      I have this preconceived notion about expatriates. I think they're pretentious, self-involved wannabes who are misfits in their own countries, so they go to another country because they need to be challenged or inspired or whatever it is they cannot seem to get in their own country. Usually manners and common sense would do the trick, but I digress. Prague validated my opinion on expatriates. I nodded and smiled and laughed out loud throughout this book.Which is not to say this is an easy book to read. Arthur Phillips is a talented writer, but there were times I wanted to suggest that he didn't have to prove that in just one sentence or one paragraph. There are other books to write, and some of that brilliance could have been saved for a future book. But at the same time, I wouldn't have the vaguest idea where to cut or edit anything from Prague. It just takes a bit of patience to stick with Prague. It's worth the time.I liked the way Arthur Phillips linked his expats to Hungary where the 5 misfits of his story decided to settle for a while. I also liked the back stories to each of the characters, particularly those who survived the uncertainty of a life spent from birth to death for the most part in such an unsettled country. In my view, this made the expats all the more clueless about the place they chose to find their "inspiration" and new lives.Phillips has a good grasp of what it's like to grow old and have one's accomplishments behind him or her. To be judged by the young who haven't an iota of life experience with which to understand what it took to reach advanced age during the time and setting of this book was an area in which Phillips absolutely nailed the attitudes of one generation interacting with another.I don't think it's a spoiler to reveal that there are a few deaths in the story of Prague. One of them made me cry. It takes a gifted writer to be able to wring that response out of me because these are, after all, characters in a book. It's just that In Prague so many of them are quite memorable.
    • 2/5
      This book has the best introduction to the characters I've read in some time. However, over time they became less interesting, and I continued to read more for the historical asides than for the main story. I abandoned reading it after about 40% of the book.
    • 5/5
      Prague is a novel about sincerity and the lack of it in personal and historical nostalgia. Phillips develops his characters artfully to illustrate deception in their dealings with each other and with key players in post cold war Budapest. The problem the expatriates have in the old city is the suspicion that their insight into emotions and behavior is insincere. They have lived personal fictions for so much of their young adult lives that self deception causes them to miss the reality of current events. This leads them to underestimate the local residents and humiliate themselves in the presence of the Magyar. Cynicism and irony become parameters of the characters’ existence and all they can look forward to are rueful reminiscences of their short time in Budapest. This nostalgia may take the form of the phony surrealism of the borderline personality photographer Nicky creating superficially shocking collages, or the true surrealism of emotionally surprising and haunting oral myths created by Nadja the ancient piano player in a run down jazz club. The decision is up to the reader in this very good first novel.
    • 4/5
      From what I understand, people either love or hate this book. I don't love or hate it, but I get it. And I enjoyed it. It is the story of five (well, it starts with five) ex-pats living in Budapest in the spring of 1990 after the Velvet Revolution. And it encompasses everything that being twenty-five in a foreign (and in this case newly established) country is...the ennui, the homesickness, the people, the restlessness, the sex, the culture shock...
    • 2/5
      I wasn't able to finish this novel. I recognize some of the feelings from my own experience as an expatriate, like how it seems like life will always be better somewhere else and how little you know about the people you're with. Still, it's hard to swallow a novel about relentless cynicism and suppressed longing. That's why I couldn't finish it.
    • 4/5
      Frankly, I am totally amazed by the number of people who absolutely hated this book. I thought it was excellent, and even though it took me about a week to read it, when I would have to put it down I couldn't wait to get back to it. Would I recommend it? Yes. It is an intense book, though, and I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone -- it would be for those who aren't in any hurry for action or expect that the author is just going to tell you up front what the book is going to be about. This is definitely one of the finest works of literature I have read in a very long time and it does demand reader interaction & patience. It's a book that you'll think about after it's all over.Let me offer you a quotation from the author, who spent time in Budapest, the setting of the novel (not Prague, which is more like a metaphor). It will pretty much sum up the feel the author is trying to create in the novel:"For some people I knew, the ear-popping pressure of so much history and self-consciousness made it hard to get up in the morning, to justify your lunch, let alone your existence. What does it mean to tell a girl you ache for her as the two of you stand in front of a building with bullet holes in it? What does it mean to fret about your fledgling and blatantly temporary career when the man next to you managed to get himself tortured by the secret police of two different regimes? How do you compare your short and uneventful life to the lives of those who actually rebelled, fought, died, sinned? Does the present owe a debt to the past? Will this place be remembered, and me with it? Maybe this would all feel more real if I were elsewhere… But who do I talk to about this, when the only language everyone seems to speak is cast-iron irony?"Prague is not just a story about expats who find their way to Budapest. It is also a story about those who have lived in Hungary under different occupations, including the Nazis & Communists, and how they've had to recreate themselves to survive, often clashing with entrenched cultural values. Set in 1990, shortly after the fall of the Wall in 1989, it begins by introducing the expat group: Mark Payton, who is writing his dissertation on Nostalgia; Charles Gabor, whose parents escaped from Hungary in 1956 and who want Charles to reclaim what is rightfully his now that the Communists are de-nationalizing former private property while he wants to make a fortune & indeed works for a firm of venture capitalists who according to him are worthless; Emily Oliver, who is in Hungary to work at the American embassy there, a job she got from her father's influence; Scott Price, who came to get away from his family whom he cannot stand, who ends up teaching English. The final member of this group is John Price, the main character, who follows his brother to Hungary and takes a job as a journalist for a periodical called BudapesToday. To be honest, I cannot do this book justice in my own words, but it is a fine piece of writing that should be read slowly.