Sayer, Derek. Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History

Sayer's (cultural history, Lancaster Univ.) inspirations for this anticipated sequel to his Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History are Walter Benjamin's essays in his Arcades Project citing Paris as the capital of the 19th century. Sayer argues that 20th-century Prague can lay claim to witnessing the birth of the modern and postmodern world. Not only was Prague host or home to such pioneers of surrealism as André Breton and Franz Kafka, but its very history, encompassing so many transformations and conjunctions, gives it a kind of surreality itself, as the author seeks to show. Focusing his lens on the years from the 1914 outbreak of World War I to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Sayer argues Prague has been an important backdrop to the darker 20th century. Sayer "hopes to rummage amid the rags and refuse of yesterday's modernity in the hope of uncovering the dreamworlds that continue to haunt." While the author sets himself a daunting task, his detail-oriented approach proves successful.