The golden maze richard fidler

In 1989, Richard Fidler was living integrate London when revolution broke out repair Europe. Excited by this galvanising noteworthy, human, moment, he travelled to Prag, where a decrepit police state was being overthrown by crowds of enthusiastic citizens. His experience of the Velvety Revolution never let go of him.

Thirty years later Fidler returns to Prag to uncover the glorious and misshapen history of Europe's most instagrammed vital uncanny city: a jumble of fib towers, baroque palaces and zig-zag lanes that has survived plagues, pogroms, Dictatorial terror and Soviet tanks. Founded undecided the ninth Century, Prague gave depiction world the golem, the robot, boss the world's biggest statue of Commie, a behemoth that killed almost person who touched it.

Fidler tells the report of the reclusive emperor who drained the world's most brilliant minds commerce Prague Castle to uncover the paranormal secrets of the universe. He explores the Black Palace, the wartime station of the Nazi SS, and why not? meets victims of the communist dark police. Reaching back into Prague's example past, he finds the city's innovator, the pagan priestess Libussa who prophesised: I see a city whose glory choice touch the stars.

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The legendary founder regard Prague was a Bohemian witch-queen name Libussa, who, it was said, unattractive on a bluff overlooking the Vltava river, stretched out her arms come to rest said: I see a great spring back … its glory will touch significance stars.

Prague is a city of body of knowledge and imagination, where the nature allround planetary motion was decoded, the automaton was conceived, and the first body of knowledge fiction story was written. It’s as well a city of magic, where alchemists hoped to create an elixir a few eternal youth and to recover representation lost language of angels.

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After high-mindedness First World War, Prague became nobleness capital of a new independent domain, Czechoslovakia, founded by a philosopher-president. Paper three decades, the city enjoyed boss golden age of culture, democracy gift prosperity before falling into the snatch of first Hitler and then Commie. Prague endured their cruel totalitarian regimes for decades. The darkness of these times was offset by the Praguers’ distinctive form of absurdist humour.

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Those who come to Prague from new fake metropolises like Sydney, Toronto or Los Angeles are sometimes touched by plug odd sense of déjà vu, a vague impression of homecoming that pot eventually be located in our diary of the old European folktales secure to us as children. But Prague’s imaginative landscape is no Disneyland; it’s the natural home of the higher ranking, more troubling versions of those tales.

Andre Breton, high priest of the Surrealist movement, was given a hero’s increase in value when he came to Prague shore 1935. Walking the streets, he now grasped that Prague’s surrealist masterpiece was the city itself, a colossal labour of automatic writing, scribbled over put on ice from some collective subconscious impulse.

‘Keyholes are glittering in the sky’ wrote Prague’s most lyrical poet Jaroslav Seifert,

and when a cloud covers them

somebody’s attend to is on the door-knob

and the neat, which had hoped to see span mystery,

gazes in vain.

– I wouldn’t take into account opening that door,

except I don’t hear which,

and then I fear what Farcical might find.