Prague Triptych

Structured as a Baroque altarpiece, 'Prague Triptych' is written in Urzidil's characteristic blend of fact, fiction, and memoir to create a mosaic of his native city. The centrepiece is the novella-length 'Weissenstein Karl,' a palavering denizen of Café Arco who sits and converses with Franz Werfel, Max Brod, Franz Kafka, Ernst Pollak (and his wife-to-be Milena Jesensk) and all the other writers known as the Prague Circle, many of whom also make cameos in other parts of the book. Through the eyes of his subjects, Urzidil takes us from Prague's earliest history and lore through the Thirty Years' War with its multiple defenestrations, to fin-de-siècle ferment and the uneasy cohabitation between Czechs, Germans, and Jews over the final decades of Habsburg rule, and ultimately to the immediate period following WWI and the establishment of an independent Czechoslovakia.