Our friend Myla Goldberg, who’s first novel Bee Season was something of a phenomenon, has just published an elegant little book about returning to Prague after having spent some ex-pat time there in the early 1990s.
Pamela Paul, in last weeks NY Times Sunday Book Review writes:
One of the more well-established literary travel series is Crown Journeys, which has steered authors like Christopher Buckley and Michael Cunningham on walks in cities both foreign and domestic. Myla Goldberg’s TIME’S MAGPIE: A Walk in Prague (Crown Journeys, $16) is this season’s best offering, though it cries out for even more than its 140 pages. It’s nice to travel with a novelist: Goldberg’s language is lush and evocative without sinking into dense or mannered descriptions. Better still, Goldberg was one of those post-collegiate Prague expatriates so prevalent in the early 1990’s, so she retains a rusty grasp of the language and remembers the city’s more obscure attractions. In Prague, she points out, ”for every designated spectacle there are at least three that have gone unmarked and unsung.” Her forays into the Czech National Library and Vysehrad Cemetery, Prague’s Pere Lachaise, make even those who have spent time in the city pine for a return ticket.