Postcards from Absurdistan

Postcards from Absurdistan is a cultural and political history of Prague from 1938, when the Nazis destroyed Czechoslovakia's artistically vibrant liberal democracy, to 1989, when the country's socialist regime collapsed after more than four decades of communist dictatorship. Derek Sayer shows that Prague's twentieth century, far from being a story of inexorable progress toward some 'end of history', whether fascist, communist, or democratic, was a tragicomedy of recurring nightmares played out in a land Czech dissidents dubbed Absurdistan. Situated in the eye of the storms that shaped the modern world, Prague holds up an unsettling mirror to the absurdities and dangers of our own times.

In a brilliant narrative, Sayer weaves a vivid montage of the lives of individual Praguers—poets and politicians, architects and athletes, journalists and filmmakers, artists, musicians, and comedians—caught up in the crosscurrents of the turbulent half century following the Nazi invasion. This is the territory of the ideologist, the collaborator, the informer, the apparatchik, the dissident, the outsider, the torturer, and the refugee—not to mention the innocent bystander who is always looking the other way and Václav Havel's greengrocer whose knowing complicity allows the show to go on. Over and over, Prague exposes modernity's dreamworlds of progress as confections of kitsch.

In a time when democracy is once again under global assault, Postcards from Absurdistan is an unforgettable portrait of a city that illuminates the predicaments of the modern world.

‘Necessary.’ Library Journal starred review

‘Fascinating and capacious, Postcards from Absurdistan surveys Prague's anguished recent past, raising concerns for its future amid new global conflicts and challenges.’ Foreword Reviews

‘Intriguing... Covering literature, the graphic arts, music, philosophy, architecture, and photography, Sayer profiles a staggering cast of artists and intellectuals.’ Publishers Weekly

‘Informative and illuminating.’ Alena Dvořáková, Dublin Review of Books

‘[A] kaleidoscopic romp across five decades of intellectual, artistic, cultural, and political foment and creativity in Prague, from the Nazi Anschluss to the collapse of communism... The book offers a magnificent and expansive collection of close readings, insightful narratives, obscure gems, and sometimes-funny, sometimes-wrenching reflections on Prague's cultural elites... Postcards from Absurdistan represents the crowning achievement of Professor Sayer's prodigious scholarship on Czech modernity.’ 2023 Canadian Jewish Literary Awards jury citation