Main entry:

Sayer, Derek.

Title & Author:

Prague, capital of the twentieth century : a surrealist history / Derek Sayer.

Publication:

©2013
Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2013]

Description:

xxi, 595 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 529-559) and index.
The starry castle opens -- The surrealist situation of the object -- A choice of abdictations -- Zone -- Le passant de Prague -- This little mother has claws -- The time of ardent reason -- The hangman and the poet -- Tongues come to life -- Metamorphoses -- The origin of robots -- A beautiful garden next door to history -- Suicide lane -- Franz Kafka's dream -- Do you speak German? Are you a Jew? -- Fantasy Land. Entry 1 crown -- The precious legacy -- Modernism in the plural -- Alfons Mucha, steel and concrete -- The ghosts of futures past -- From the window of the Grand Café Orient -- Granny's valley -- The electric century -- All the beauties of the world -- Body politic -- The silent woman -- The poetry of future memories -- Renaissance ballet -- Beautiful ideas that kill -- Sexual nocturne -- Cut with a kitchen knife -- A war economy, words of command, and gas -- On the edge of an abyss -- The beautiful gardener -- The bride stripped bare -- Gulping for air and violence -- Orders of things -- L'origine du monde -- Dreams of Venus -- A girl with a baton -- Love's boat shattered against everyday life -- A national tragedy with pretty legs -- A poet assassinated -- A wall as thick as eternity -- Didier desroches -- Am I not right, Jan Hus? -- Messalina's shoulder in the gaslight -- That familiar white darkness -- The gold of time -- The necromancer's junk room -- The Prague-Paris telephone -- The dancing house.
Translated from the Czech.
Dust jacket.

Summary:

Setting out to recover the roots of modernity in the boulevards, interiors, and arcades of the "city of light," Walter Benjamin dubbed Paris "the capital of the nineteenth century." In this eagerly anticipated sequel to his acclaimed Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History, Derek Sayer argues that Prague could well be seen as the capital of the much darker twentieth century. Ranging across twentieth-century Prague's astonishingly vibrant and always surprising human landscape, this richly illustrated cultural history describes how the city has experienced (and suffered) more ways of being modern than perhaps any other metropolis.

Resources:
Book review (H-Net)

ISBN:

9780691043807 (hardcover ; alk. paper)
0691043809 (hardcover ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Centre for Environmental Studies London Planning Research Applications Group
Surrealism Czech Republic Prague.
Surréalisme République tchèque Prague.
Art and Design.
Civilization.
Surrealism.
Moderne
Konst och arkitektur historia.
Historia.
Prague (Czech Republic) Civilization 20th century.
Czech Republic Prague.
Tjeckien Prag.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 285389
Call No.: NX571.C92 P777 2013
Status: Available