Two Prague Stories
This book is sheer past. Homeland and childhood – both of them long remote – form its background. – Today I would not have written it this...
Prague Tales from the Little Quarter
Jan Neruda first unveiled his Prague Tales from the Little Quarter in 1878. These stories usher the reader back to the first half of the...
Johann Strauss
Popularly known as the Waltz Kings, Johann Strauss I and II shaped the musical fortunes of Austria for almost a century. The father brought...
Czech Cuisine
Are halušky and škubánky a mystery to you? Have you ever heard of lívance and vdolky? Then you’re on the right track with this culinary...
The Golden Lane
A museum guide to the Goldmakers’ Lane featuring rare images, background information and a wealth of details.
According to legend, the...
Fips’ Birthday
The Golden Lane in Prague. In the past, its charming and colourful little houses were mainly inhabited by simple and poor people. For many...
Kindheit in Wien
There are now fewer and fewer voices who can tell us about their childhoods in the 1940s and 1950s. Helmut Birkhan, long-serving medieval...
Prag empfing uns als Verwandte
In December 1936, the Nazi state stripped Thomas Mann of his German citizenship. But this blow missed its mark – the Nobel laureate and most...
Prager Tagebuch
In this poetic diary, literary historian Peter Becher guides us through a Prague reality deeper than the touristy façade. This sensitive...
The Imperial City of Baden bei Wien
Baden – a Biedermeier spa town, nestling amid vine-covered hillsides – is home to the Old Town’s charming alleyways, immaculate baths and...
Maria Theresa
Maria Theresa of Austria – a Baroque concerto grosso, a cantata of beauty, magnificence and imperial splendour. Juliana Weitlaner has been...
The Best Imperial Recipes
From Tafelspitz to Kaiserschmarren – the Imperial Court Kitchen was more than just a collection of fine delicacies, prepared by the best...
Franz Joseph I
Franz Joseph defined his era and exemplified the old Austria. Installed on the throne as a young prince in 1848, he governed the Imperial...
The Metamorphosis
“When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect. He lay on his...
Letter to Father
The Letter to Father (1919) was never sent but is considered the key to Franz Kafka’s (1883-1924) literary work. This impressive testimony...
A Country Doctor
At the Prague Castle, in the Golden Lane, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) wrote these short stories, which were published in his lifetime under the...
Lost in America
“The story that I’m writing, which, I must say, is laid out into the endless … is called The Missing One (Der Verschollene) and takes place...
The Castle
“The words that can be said about this book are merely tentative asides. A person must glean for himself line by line how the ominous...
To Spite Simplex
A woman’s life in wartime. A young Bohemian girl, dressed as a boy, gets caught up in the turmoil of the Thirty Years’ War, loses her...
The Beggar of the Pont des Arts
Wilhelm Hauff (1802-1827) had only just turned twenty-five when he wrote The Beggar of the Pont des Arts, a subtle and sensitive story that...
Folktales of Doctor Faustus
Doctor Faustus lived between approximately 1480 and 1539; to this day he remains the embodiment of humanity in striving for knowledge and...
Fantastic Tales
American storyteller Edgar A. Poe’s (1809 Boston - 1849 Baltimore) detective stories have such impact and intensity that even George Orwell...
The Path to the Last Garden
Born in Northern Bohemia, the German-Jewish author Dan Weinstein (born 1925) set his futuristic novel in a ruinous post-apocalyptic world....
Robinson Crusoe
The English adventurer and writer Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) only completed his first and most famous novel The Life and Strange Surprizing...
Legends of the Saints
“Here is a praiseworthy and useful book, simple yet difficult, light yet dark: the lives, passions and sorrows of the saints, known as the...
Tales from Shakespeare
Tales from Shakespeare is the abiding legacy of English poet Charles Lamb (1775-1834). This book sweeps us into Shakespeare’s realm and...
From the Treasure Chest of the Rhenisch Fireside Companion
By the 19th century, the simple, humorous stories that Johann Peter Hebel (1760-1826) published over the years in the Rhenisch Fireside...
BergersDorf
Born in 1944 near Pirmasens, the author based this documentary novel dealing with the entrapment, entanglement and eviction of an entire...
To Leave the World in Spring
August 1944. Young Czech forced labourers are fleeing Vienna to set up a resistance group in Moravia. 21-year-old Božena works in a...
We Live Far From Here, Far From Here
Diether Krywalski is an author and editor of literary studies and guides, and a contributor to the Lexikon der Weltliteratur. In recent...
Capable Officers and Upright Men
“Give me upright men and capable officers” demanded Empress Maria Theresa of the commander in charge of the first “military hothouse” at its...
The Poor Fiddler
The 1848 musical novella The Poor Fiddler transports the reader to 19th-century Vienna. The Austrian dramatist Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872)...
Heading South with Kafka
This opulently illustrated book was the first to bring together accounts of all Kafka’s trips to Switzerland and Italy, on which his main...
Stories from a Blind Life
The stories by blind author Oskar Baum (1883-1942) collected here offer the reader a unique take on the early 20th century: Baum’s...
A Musician’s Blood
In his memoir A Musician’s Blood (Musikantenblut) the apprentice locksmith and later court musician Wenzel Abert (1842-1915) describes his...
Through the Year with Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was born in Prague; his writing has fascinated generations of readers all over the world and includes some of the most famous...
A Great Artist One Day
When we speak of the work of Franz Kafka (1883-1924), we instinctively think of his literary work. It is less well known that Kafka also...
Prager Rhapsodie
Stroke by stroke, character by character, Paul Leppin’s prose sketches capture the image of Prague . Paul Leppin chats pensively about the...
Legends from Brno
This elegant edition of tales from Brno is based on a collection made by Leopold Masur, which appeared in 1934 in what was then...
Fortress of my Youth
But the book also tells of magnificent concert performances, accomplished pieces of theatre and especially of exhilarating friendships in...
German tales from Moravia
This anthology of German tales from Moravia is devoted to a small Central European country that is still little known to this day. The...
The Imperial City of Baden bei Wien
Baden – a Biedermeier spa town, nestling amid vine-covered hillsides – is home to the Old Town’s charming alleyways, immaculate baths and...
With Pen and Scalpel
Two professions, two callings: there is a long and eminent list of doctors who have also been authors – not least among them being Friedrich...
Old-Prague Peep Show
Oskar Wiener’s (b. 1873 in Prague, †1944 in Theresienstadt) Old-Prague Peep Show (1912) displayed images and figures of the city stemming...
Bohemian National Dances
This cultural study is the most exhaustive collection of Bohemian folk dances as recorded by Alfred Waldau from the mid-19th century...
That Jazz of Praha
Culture is big in Prague. There are huge cultural events, and smaller, more intimate occasions. Modern jazz is generally something of a...
Franzensbad in Bohemia
Established in the late 18th century, Franzensbad (Františkovy Lázně) with its bubbling, healing spring, elegant buildings and extensive...
Mozart and Prague
Prague is the second city after Salzburg to be inseparably linked with the name of Mozart. Here in the Bohemian capital he enjoyed his...
Wanderer, if You Ever Come to Prague
It would be hard to find another city in Europe so overflowing with stories, tales, and legends as the Old City of Prague. They tell of...
Piarists and Grammar School Boys
Strangely, one aspect of bygone Prague life seems to have escaped researchers in their many accounts: Prague was not only a university city...
Legends from Olomouc
These tales from Moravia’s hidden capital were published in 1892 and illustrated by José Hilber. This beautiful edition will delight any...
Walpurgis Night
“The demons of the past are stirring in the unworldly old aristocrats of Prague Castle, and the old men are shocked by their own misspent,...
Meditation
Kafka’s little meditations form something previously unknown in German literature; I know no model.
Hans Kohn in Selbstwehr (Dec. 20, 1912)
...Historic Prague
O Prague, O solemn city, O city of martyrs, musicians and pretty maids …, O Prague, how much of my freedom-loving soul you have taken from...
Austrian Fairytales
‘Stick on!’ cries the dashing young man who wants to court the Princess, and soon everyone is stuck to his little magic wagon: the sooty...
Czech Fairytales
Just like other European nations, the Czechs have a treasure trove of fairytales that has been lovingly handed down over the centuries. Some...
The Best Czech Recipes
Just as in the days of the Emperor, people flock to the Czech Republic today to savour tasty local specialities, ranging from the fine...
The Prague Golem
Prague has been one of the most significant cities in European Judaism for many centuries. Alongside notable buildings such as the Old-New...
Prague Cafés
Exploring the coffee houses of Prague is a rewarding pastime. From the kavárna of old Prague to the jazz café of the music-loving Czechs n...
The Bohemian Forest
The Bohemian Forest: it is like a melancholy song that truly tugs on our heartstrings. Monotonous, unchanging, the wood and gloomy moorland...
Sacrifice to the Lares
Sacrifice to the Lares (1895), the collection of poems written by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) when he was only twenty years of age, is...
Stories of God
“I believe this book contains a few kernels which may grow into trees,” Rainer Maria Rilke revealed in a letter to a friend in 1900, shortly...
Letters to a Young Poet
At the beginning of 1903, a pupil at the military academy in Wiener-Neustadt, Franz Xaver Kappus, sends a few poems to Rainer Maria Rilke,...
The Grandmother (Babička)
The Czech author Božena Němcová (1820-1862), born in Vienna, paints an entirely unsentimental portrait of the country habits and customs of...
Franz Kafka and Prague
„Franz Kafka was Prague and Prague was Franz Kafka”, Johannes Urzidil once wrote. And indeed, following the traces of Kafka’s life, your way...
Severin’s Journey into the Dark
According to Prague-German author Paul Leppin (1878-1945), the streets of his home city “led one astray and ill fortune lurked on the...
Last night at the café
This lavish edition sweeps the reader into the lost world of old imperial Prague: it includes over a thousand historic photographs and...
Childhood and destiny in post-war turmoil
Parentless children, stranded by the war — Swiss teacher Olga Fierz tells the moving story of a unique rescue mission in a topsy-turvy era....
When Austria was still Bohemian
When Austria was still Bohemian ... that was “many years ago”, and now when Austrians and Czechs look at each other across the border,...
The Condor/The Village on the Heath
These stories, published in 1840, brought the young Adalbert Stifter literary acclaim. He had long seen himself as a painter and scarcely...
Gustav Meyrink
This latest work by Hartmut Binder represents nothing less than the first comprehensive biography of Gustav Meyrink to meet the needs of a...
Krambambuli
The most well-known Austrian animal story is familiar to generations of readers and has become a true classic, with many film and television...
Kafka’s Vienna
Kafka was a subject of the Austrian empire, yet his relationship with its capital city is uncharted territory for scholars of his work. As a...
Jewish Fairytales and Legends
A Water Prince living in the Moldau, talking animals, flying demons, packs of thieves and kind-hearted folk, intermingled with frequent...
Franz Kafka and Prague
“Kafka was Prague and Prague was Kafka. Never was Prague so perfect, so typical of herself as she was during Kafka’s lifetime, and never...
Once a Doctor, Always a Doctor
This biography follows in the footsteps of Styrian poet Dr Hans Kloepfer, whose poems such as Dahoam, Da Ruß and Spätherbst are firmly...
Folktales and Legends
Once upon a time, every river bend, every mountain peak and every church tower had its own story to tell; adventurers and pitch-burners...
The Spanish Flu
A hundred years ago, as the First World War came to an end after four brutal years, a lethal pandemic was gaining ground: the Spanish...
Peter Rosegger
Peter Rosegger embodies the dreamlike ascent from simple Alpine farm lad to the celebrated prince among poets of his days. Millions were...
Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele had many faces: the exceptionally talented artistic genius; the sensitive creator of peaceful landscapes and the shameless...
High Forest
In his masterpiece, the story High Forest, Adalbert Stifter describes the love of two sisters at the time of the Thirty Years’ War. At their...