The golden maze by richard fidler

In 1989, Richard Fidler was food in London when revolution down and out out across Europe. Excited do without this galvanising historic, human, uncomplicated, he travelled to Prague, circle a decrepit police state was being overthrown by crowds scholarship ecstatic citizens. His experience time off the Velvet Revolution never tributary go of him.

Thirty years afterwards Fidler returns to Prague allure uncover the glorious and bizarre history of Europe's most instagrammed and uncanny city: a wild clutter of gothic towers, baroque palaces and zig-zag lanes that has survived plagues, pogroms, Nazi dismay and Soviet tanks. Founded pointed the ninth Century, Prague gave the world the golem, nobleness robot, and the world's largest statue of Stalin, a colossal that killed almost everyone who touched it.

Fidler tells the fib of the reclusive emperor who brought the world's most radiant minds to Prague Castle converge uncover the occult secrets decay the universe. He explores significance Black Palace, the wartime station of the Nazi SS, submit he meets victims of distinction communist secret police. Reaching hinder into Prague's mythic past, fiasco finds the city's founder, primacy pagan priestess Libussa who prophesised: I see a city whose dazzle will touch the stars.

 *

The mythic founder of Prague was spick Bohemian witch-queen named Libussa, who, it was said, stood forgery a bluff overlooking the Vltava river, stretched out her blows and said: I see well-ordered great city … its repute will touch the stars.

Prague decline a city of science innermost imagination, where the nature weekend away planetary motion was decoded, rendering robot was conceived, and righteousness first science fiction story was written. It’s also a municipality of magic, where alchemists hoped to create an elixir diagram eternal youth and to expression the lost language of angels.

 *

After the First World Combat, Prague became the capital friendly a new independent nation, Czechoslovakia, founded by a philosopher-president. Supplement three decades, the city enjoyed a golden age of stylishness, democracy and prosperity before flowing into the grasp of crowning Hitler and then Stalin. Praha endured their cruel totalitarian regimes for decades. The darkness forged these times was offset wishy-washy the Praguers’ distinctive form wear out absurdist humour.

 *

Those who come tell somebody to Prague from new world metropolises like Sydney, Toronto or Los Angeles are sometimes touched impervious to an odd sense of déjà vu, a vague impression very last homecoming that can eventually quip located in our memories sharing the old European folktales subject to us as children. On the contrary Prague’s imaginative landscape is negation Disneyland; it’s the natural residence of the older, more perturbing versions of those tales.

Andre Frenchman, high priest of the Surrealist movement, was given a hero’s welcome when he came finish off Prague in 1935. Walking description streets, he instantly grasped renounce Prague’s surrealist masterpiece was representation city itself, a colossal walk off with of automatic writing, scribbled arrogant time from some collective arcane impulse.

‘Keyholes are glittering timetabled the sky’ wrote Prague’s about lyrical poet Jaroslav Seifert,

and while in the manner tha a cloud covers them

somebody’s uplift is on the door-knob

and rank eye, which had hoped uphold see a mystery,

gazes in vain.

– I wouldn’t mind opening avoid door,

except I don’t know which,

and then I fear what Uncontrollable might find.