Prague, I see a city... is a novel of quest, in which the heroine abandons the material world of everyday society and linear history, perceiving it as false, temporary and distracting, and journeys in search of her true identity. Suffused with the atmosphere immediately following the end of the Communist regime, Hodrova's novel is a conscious addition to the tradition of Prague literary texts by, for example, Karel Hynek Macha, Jakub Arbes, Gustav Meyrink, and Franz Kafka, who present the city as a hostile living creature, or as a labyrinthine place of magic and mystery, in which the individual human being may easily get lost. Translated by David Short.
