Ten Great Books set in PRAGUE

4th November 2021

Prague is the latest city for us to visit in our ‘Great books set in…’ series. Ten great books set in Prague. Prague, The capital city of the Czech Republic, is bisected by the Vltava River. Nicknamed “the City of a Hundred Spires,” it’s known for its Old Town Square, the heart of its historic core, with colorful baroque buildings, Gothic churches and the medieval Astronomical Clock, which gives an animated hourly show. Completed in 1402, pedestrian Charles Bridge is lined with statues of Catholic saints.

‘If European cities were a necklace, Prague would be a diamond among the pearls’– Czech saying

Prague Nights by Benjamin Black

Prague, 1599. Christian Stern, a young doctor, has just arrived in the city. On his first evening, he finds a young woman’s body half-buried in the snow.

The dead woman is none other than the emperor’s mistress, and there’s no shortage of suspects. Stern is employed by the emperor himself to investigate the murder. In the search to find the culprit, Stern finds himself drawn into the shadowy world of the emperor’s court – unspoken affairs, letters written in code, and bitter rivalries. But there’s no turning back now…

The Child on Platform One by Gill Thompson

Prague 1939. Young mother Eva has a secret from her past. When the Nazis invade, Eva knows the only way to keep her daughter Miriam safe is to send her away – even if it means never seeing her again.

But when Eva is taken to a concentration camp, her secret is at risk of being exposed.

In London, Pamela volunteers to help find places for the Jewish children arrived from Europe. Befriending one unclaimed little girl, Pamela brings her home.

Then when her son enlists in the RAF, Pamela realises how easily her own world could come crashing down…

Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal

TOO LOUD A SOLITUDE is a tender and funny story of Hant’a – a man who has lived in a Czech police state – for 35 years, working as compactor of wastepaper and books. In the process of compacting, he has acquired an education so unwitting he can’t quite tell which of his thoughts are his own and which come from his books. He has rescued many from jaws of hydraulic press and now his house is filled to the rooftops. Destroyer of the written word, he is also its perpetuator.

But when a new automatic press makes his job redundant there’s only one thing he can do – go down with his ship.

This is an eccentric romp celebrating the indestructability- against censorship, political oppression etc – of the written word.

Escape to Perdition by James Silvester

Prague 2015. Herbert Biely, aged hero of the Prague Spring, stands on the brink of an historic victory, poised to reunite the Czech and Slovak Republics twenty-six years after the Velvet Revolution.

The imminent Czech elections are the final stage in realising his dream of reunification, but other parties have their own agendas and plans for the fate of the region. A shadowy collective, masked as an innocuous European Union Institute, will do anything to preserve the status quo.

The mission of Institute operative Peter Lowes is to prevent reunification by the most drastic of measures. Yet Peter is not all that he seems. A deeply troubled man, desperate to escape the past, his resentment towards himself, his assignment and his superiors deepens as he questions not just the cause, but his growing feelings for the beautiful and captivating mission target. As alliances shift and the election countdown begins, Prague becomes the focal point for intrigue on an international scale. The body count rises, options fade, and Peter’s path to redemption is clouded in a maelstrom of love, deception and murder. Can he confront his past to save the future?

This is a high quality page turning thriller and perfect for fans of Le Carre.

A Year and a Day by Isabelle Broom

For Megan, visiting Prague with her friend Ollie is just business. Nothing more. Because if she admits the truth she might lose everything.

For Hope, this trip is a surprise treat from Charlie, her new partner. But she’s struggling to enjoy the city when she knows how angry her daughter is. And that it’s all her fault.

For Sophie, Prague has always been magical. And now she’s counting down the moments until her boyfriend Robin joins her in the city that holds so many of their memories…

HHhH by Laurent Binet

The nameless narrator of “HHhH” has serious misgivings about the novel he is writing. Like Laurent Binet, the book’s French author, he has spent years examining the murder of the SS general Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in 1942 with a view to retelling the story as a thriller. But now he decides it is dishonest to invent descriptions, dialogue, thoughts and feelings on a subject as serious as this. The best he can do, he concludes, is to provide a running commentary on the truth (or otherwise) of what he is writing. “I just hope that, however bright and blinding the veneer of fiction that covers this fabulous story,” he writes, “you will still be able to see through it to the historical reality that lies behind.”
He need not sound apologetic. By placing himself in the story, alongside Heydrich and his assassins, the narrator challenges the traditional way historical fiction is written. We join him on his research trips to Prague: we learn his reactions to documents, books and movies: we hear him admit that he sometimes imagines what he cannot possibly know. And, in the end, his making of a historical novel brings a raw truth to an extraordinary act of resistance. This literary tour de force, now smoothly translated by Sam Taylor, earned Binet the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman in 2010.

City of a Thousand Spies by Kathryn Guare

Conor McBride has accepted bargains he may live to regret – assuming he lives through them at all. He’s taken an undercover assignment in exchange for the chance to resume his career as a solo violinist. He’s also agreed to a proposal from the woman he loves, but it isn’t the type he had in mind. When their simple mission turns complicated, Conor and Kate discover everyone is hiding something – secrets as twisted as the fabled lanes of an old world city. Unraveling them will be anything but simple, or safe.

Czechmate: The Spy Who Played Jazz by Bill Moody

The year is 1968. The liberal reforms of Czechoslovakia’s new leader, Alexander Dubcek, have outraged the Kremlin and now, 250,000 Warsaw Pact forces are amassed on the borders. For American intelligence, the situation is worsened when their prime source, Josef Blaha, threatens to cut them off unless one demand is met: a totally safe contact. For CIA veteran, Alan Curtis, jazz musician Gene Williams seems the ideal choice. His invitation to the Prague Jazz festival gives him perfect cover and access to Prague. But Williams is a musician, not a spy and has other ideas that force Curtis to resort to blackmail to get the young musician to accept what Curtis calls a simple pickup and delivery. It starts to go wrong when Williams finds Blaha murdered by the KGB and he’s left to unravel the puzzle on his own. What he finds is even more than Curtis bargained for. With the help of Blaha’s beautiful granddaughter Lena, Williams races against time to warn Dubcek of the impending invasion and uncover a traitor in the US Embassy.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

The note was on vellum, pierced by the talons of the almost-crow that delivered it. Karou read the message. ‘He never says please’, she sighed, but she gathered up her things.

When Brimstone called, she always came.

In general, Karou has managed to keep her two lives in balance. On the one hand, she’s a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague: on the other, errand-girl to a monstrous creature who is the closest thing she has to family. Raised half in our world, half in ‘Elsewhere’, she has never understood Brimstone’s dark work – buying teeth from hunters and murderers – nor how she came into his keeping. She is a secret even to herself, plagued by the sensation that she isn’t whole.

Now the doors to Elsewhere are closing, and Karou must choose between the safety of her human life and the dangers of a war-ravaged world that may hold the answers she has always sought.

The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman

During the last moments of calm in prewar Prague, Lenka, a young art student, falls in love with Josef. They marry – but soon, like so many others, they are torn apart by the currents of war.
In America Josef becomes a successful obstetrician and raises a family, though he never forgets the wife he thinks died in the camps. But in the Nazi ghetto of Terezín – and later in Auschwitz – Lenka has survived, relying on her skills as an artist and the memories of a husband she believes she will never see again.

Now, decades later, an unexpected encounter in New York brings Lenka and Josef back together.

From the comfort of life in Prague before the occupation to the horrors of Nazi Europe, The Lost Wife explores the endurance of first love, the resilience of the human spirit and our capacity to remember.

Tony for the TripFiction Team

Want to find more books set in PRAGUE? Check out our database!

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