John Banville’s “Kepler” is a historical novel that recounts various episodes from the life of Johannes Kepler, the renowned 17th-century German astronomer and mathematician. It explores Kepler’s personal life — including his marriage, poor health, and the deaths of his children — as well as his discoveries concerning the mathematical principles governing planetary orbits.
“How I Came to Know Fish” are Ota Pavel’s memoirs of his childhood in Bohemia (Czech Republic). The novella describes idyllic summers spent with his family in the countryside near Branov, where he went fishing with his father. However, his childhood is abruptly interrupted when the Nazis send his father and brothers to a concentration camp.
“The Golem” is a retelling of the Jewish folklore story about the Golem of Prague, a giant figure made of clay brought to life by a rabbi to protect the Jews of Prague. In Isaac Singer’s version, the Golem saves a banker and other Jews who have been falsely accused, but the rabi loses control over his creation.
In the novel “Mendelssohn is on the Roof”, Heydrich, the chief Nazi in Prague during World War II, orders the removal of the statue of the Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn from the roof of the Rudolfinum, a prominent music hall on the banks of the Vltava River in Prague. The order is simple but tricky to carry out, as the statues do not have names, and the SS officer in charge does not know how Mendelssohn looks like. He commands to remove the statue with the biggest nose, which turns out to be Richard Wagner, Hitler’s favourite composer. This farcical incident sets the stage for “Mendelssohn is on the Roof”, but the novel soon turns away to the harsh reality of life in Nazi-occupied Prague and the Terezin ghetto (Theresienstadt).
“The Radetzky March” is a historical novel that follows three generations of the von Trotta family during the era of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The story begins when Joseph Trotta, a young Slovenian lieutenant, saves Emperor Franz Joseph’s life at the Battle of Solferino (1859). As a reward, he is ennobled by the Emperor. Later on, disillusioned with the army, he steers his son Franz towards a career as a civil servant. Franz becomes a dutiful district administrator in Moravia (now the Czech Republic) but, in turn, decides that his own son, Carl-Joseph, should pursue a military career. Carl-Joseph, however, is ill-suited to the rigours of army life. Throughout the novel, the reputation of their illustrious ancestor, Joseph von Trotta, looms over the fates of Franz and Carl-Joseph.
A man named “K.” arrives in an unnamed, wintry village. He has been summoned by the castle authorities to work as a surveyor, but it soon becomes clear that this was a bureaucratic error. He is permitted to stay temporarily in the village and work as a school janitor. Throughout the novel, K. tries to arrange a meeting with the elusive castle officials and to make sense of the villagers’ submissive behaviour towards the authorities.
Josef K., an ordinary bank clerk, finds himself entangled in a nightmarish legal ordeal. He faces court hearings governed by opaque rules, held on Sundays, in the attics of shabby tenement buildings, but remains unaware of the charges against him or how to prove his innocence. As he attempts to gain control over the legal process and his own life, he is disturbed by an erotic attraction to several women associated with the court and his boarding house.
“The Good Soldier Švejk” is a satirical novel about the misadventures of Josef Švejk, a middle-aged man from Prague, who is conscripted in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. Josef Švejk is a seemingly enthusiastic soldier who carries out his orders to the point of absurdity, thereby frustrating his superiors and exposing the contradictions of the military system. The novel ends before Švejk ever reaches the front line or even fires a shot.