Prague by Arthur Phillips

Jul 12, 2015 Jeffrey Keeten rated it really liked it · review of another edition

"What does it mean to fret about your fledgling career when the man across the table was tortured by two different regimes? How does your short, uneventful life compare to the lives of those who actually resisted, fought, and died? What does your angst mean in a city still pocked with bullet holes from war and crushed rebellion?"

photo Budapest20City20of20Grit_zps0oii0pxl.jpg

Budapest: City of Grit

John Price left California for Budapest in search of adventure, but also to reconnect to his older brother Scott. When he was younger, Scott w ...more

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Aug 19, 2017 Michael rated it really liked it

This novel perfectly captures youth on the precipice of adulthood, full of earnest yearning, eternal questions, irony and a creeping cynicism and even dread that that moment, right then, is about as good as it gets. It's about a group of American expats hanging out in Eastern Europe, Budapest to be exact, where they all yearn for Prague, the epitome of cool, told in thick stylish ironic prose that I enjoyed, laughed at, and occasionally envied. Having been an expat myself at about the same point ...more

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Aug 03, 2007 Lp rated it did not like it

I'm with the reviewer who wants a medal for finishing this book. It was a slog, during which I kept stopping to read reviews to figure out what on earth I was missing. The promo copy compared the author to Proust and Joyce. Reviewers likened him to Kundera. To me his work resembled nothing more than pretentious freshman ramblings designed to impress writing professors.

I am here to tell you, the emperor has no clothes. This is a boring book, peopled by worthless two-dimensional (and that's being I'm with the reviewer who wants a medal for finishing this book. It was a slog, during which I kept stopping to read reviews to figure out what on earth I was missing. The promo copy compared the author to Proust and Joyce. Reviewers likened him to Kundera. To me his work resembled nothing more than pretentious freshman ramblings designed to impress writing professors.

I am here to tell you, the emperor has no clothes. This is a boring book, peopled by worthless two-dimensional (and that's being generous) characters, save one, who gets precious little ink. One reviewer said he could have done without section II, which introduces this one character of substance, a Hungarian printer. If it hadn't been for this section, I wouldn't have finished the book (hey maybe I could have done without section II after all!). The author's one gift comes out in his lists. At least you know there is some structure, and that it will end at some point. Unfortunately, there are only two or three lists in the book.

His voice is very inconsistent. There are these extremely dry attempts at circuitous, self-consciously poetic humor (which for the most part fail) at the same time as there are these gee-whiz takes on things that I think are supposed to be suprising that most of us who hadn't fallen asleep figured out 100 pages ago. Unless this is some postmodern attempt at...postmodernism? In which case, yawn.

The person who recommended this book to me, whose tastes I otherwise respect, found it very funny. I didn't get the humor at all.

Some mention was made, too, of it being a "Gen-x novel." And that that was a possible reason for my not liking the book. Oh, please. I'm not so old that I can't see Gen-X from here, but if it is a book about a generation, I definitely feel for the young-uns for being so....boring! One of the characters likens the losers who are wasting their ex-pat opportunities to the "Lost Generation" of ex-pats in Paris and Berlin in the 20s and 30s. This struck me as ridiculously funny, but not in the context of the story an a misguided character, but because I think the author really meant it.

Of course this could just be the author being smarter than any of us. Ha ha. Still, I doubt it. In the middle of my struggle with this book, I happened to hear the author reading some story about a guy's tryst with an Eastern European spy/prostitute on "This American Life." I didn't find his voice any more compelling when I could actually hear it. Not to mention his story-telling abilities. ...more

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Feb 23, 2011 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviews, read-2011, phillips-arthur

A Tale of Two Cities

Despite the title, the novel “Prague” is set exclusively in Budapest, the capital of Hungary.

A Confession and a Generalisation

First, a confession: I am hopelessly, romantically nostalgic about Hungary, a nation I have never visited.
There is a girl involved, well a woman, and the years were 1978 and 1979.
But you don’t want to know about that. Besides, we would need a few glasses of Bull’s Blood to taste the flavour of those times.
Second: a gross generalization: obviously influ ...more

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Aug 11, 2010 Maciek rated it it was ok

Shelves: read-in-2010, disappointments, own-in-paperback, owned-books

Prague promises much more than it actually delivers. I was lured into reading it by the magnitude of praise - it won numerous awards and the reviews were positive, comparing the author to such writers as Kundera and Hemingway, even F. Scott Fitzgerald - unfortunately that's not the case.

The novel is supposed to deal with a group of expatriates who came to Budapest to discover themselves. That's an interesting theme, but it's all what it is - one prologned theme, without suspense. It quickly beco Prague promises much more than it actually delivers. I was lured into reading it by the magnitude of praise - it won numerous awards and the reviews were positive, comparing the author to such writers as Kundera and Hemingway, even F. Scott Fitzgerald - unfortunately that's not the case.

The novel is supposed to deal with a group of expatriates who came to Budapest to discover themselves. That's an interesting theme, but it's all what it is - one prologned theme, without suspense. It quickly becomes tedious and the book starts to resemble an endurance test. Will you finish it or not?

The characters are largely uninteresting. Writers? Academics? Embassy workers? Where are the people who bought cheap tickets and went on to have an adventure, to discover the newly liberated frontier? They're certainly not here. Prague is populated by a bunch of posers, who all read surprisingly alike therefore burdening thereader ith heavy feeling of dealing with thinly veiled self-portraits of the author, who's a Harvard graduate and a 5 times Jeopardy! champion. While there's nothing wrong with both, I propably wouldn't want to spend much time within a group composed solely of such people.

Arthur Phillip's prose doesn't help either. There are some good lines, and gripping scenes, but they all drown in his obsession with surface detail, which amounts to whole paragraphs which amount to whole pages. The oppresively omniscient narrator resembles a an aging tour guide, and endlessly describes and describes everything till the tourists he's supposed to entertain start dozing off while they are still standing. It's as exciting as reading a phone book.

Prague manages to defy two most important rules of writing at the same time - show, don't tell, and if nothing happens after page 100 or 150 why should the reader go on?

It seems that the author doesn't care much about the reader, as he is utterly post having anything to say. Prague offers no new valuable insights and reads more like a writing exercise than a novel; it's meandering and unfocused. It consists of snarky phrases and sentences that are all style but completely lack any substance; the few interesting moments are buried far too deep in the verbiage and are simply not allowed to shine. It could be much better as a series of short stories, loosely connected vignettes, all dealing with the same theme: the crash of hopes and the loss of delusions. But, in this form, slugging through 367 pages is simply not worth it.
...more

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Aug 28, 2015 Amy rated it did not like it

No one cares about your boner, John. NO. ONE.
You are boring and whiny and mistakenly think groinal longings are a substitute for deep introspection. I don't blame your brother for hating you. You seem like a paltry rewriting, an id, of the author. I can think of no other reason why Phillips would find it necessary to focus on you. In the real world, you would never get laid, but rather become an MRA, wear a fedora, and end up shooting someone because your privilege and entitlement taught you you ...more

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Nov 09, 2012 Kurt rated it it was amazing

This paragraph will help you understand whether or not you are going to like Prague. In context, it serves to introduce the five main characters as they begin a game of Sincerity (each person states three lies and one true statement, and players try to determine which is which):

"Well, let's see what's what then," said the inventor and undisputed master of Sincerity. John Price watched Charles stretch his arms around the back of his chair, lace his fingers together, and lean back slightly to perm

This paragraph will help you understand whether or not you are going to like Prague. In context, it serves to introduce the five main characters as they begin a game of Sincerity (each person states three lies and one true statement, and players try to determine which is which):

"Well, let's see what's what then," said the inventor and undisputed master of Sincerity. John Price watched Charles stretch his arms around the back of his chair, lace his fingers together, and lean back slightly to permit the lowering sun to touch his face. A symbolic opening of the game, John noted, as if Gabor were holding himself up to the light, an illustration of candor. And yet, it was an intentionally symbolic action. Indeed, John thought that he could see that Charles liked the idea of his competitors/friends noticing the symbolism but then being smart enough to reject it as not only a mere symbol but also an inaccurate one, a silent trick, since he surely did not believe that turning his face to the sun demonstrated any actual candor. And, John thought further, perhaps this was a small compliment as well, since Charles trusted that you were clever enough not to take the gesture at face value but to know that the act of intentionally symbolically revealing himself was meant to show that he was not revealing himself. Alternately, Charles might have been stretching.

(p. 10, emphasis in original) This was the paragraph that completely sold me on the novel, a novel I loved through the last page. I love the complexity - how John is clearly intelligent but possibly overthinking, how Charles is someone who is completely capable of imbuing every gesture with multiple layers of meaning, how Arthur Phillips both loves and mocks his characters, the unspoken personal insecurities that lead to reading so much into possibly innocent movements... The paragraph (and the book itself) should strike the reader as pretentious - it certainly is - but the question remains whether that is a deterrent or a delight. I love it - but I love Whit Stillman movies and I went to Harvard Law School and I spend most of my time with people who like irony in its classical sense (meaning the opposite of what is said - not so much in an Alanis "Huh, that's unexpected" sense). I like to pretend that I'm not like the characters in this book, but I suspect that I am. And this novel is Arthur Phillips saying that, hey, if I'm one of these people with such sharp disconnects between their inner and outer lives, with such a thick ironic shell protecting them from the consequences of having or expressing real feelings.. then my life will be pretty tragic, but he'll care anyway, and maybe we'll all see the humor in it.

Plot-wise, this book is an audacious debut novel about five young people who have crossed the Atlantic (four from the States and one, with frequent humorously bashful reminders, from Canada) to start new lives in Budapest, where they work unfulfilling jobs and dislike each other and lounge around their favorite cafe or bar to enjoy a mutual sense of being better than everyone else - while wishing they were in Prague, where real life must be happening. This expresses a bit differently in each one, of course, from the openly cruel Scott and Charles to the melancholy scholar Mark to the possibly innocent Emily, to the reader-friendly outsider John. This new Lost Generation (and Phillips pays homage to his predecessors here with plenty of references to Hemingway and other expat writers) passes about a year together from May of 1990 to May of 1991, and each character enjoys fascinating and thorough development by Phillips. They enjoy romances of various maturity levels, and a few of them get involved with a complicated effort to restore a Hungarian printing press operation (which leads to a fascinating sidetrack in Part II, tracing the history of Hungary through one fictional family, told as part myth, part history, and - in my favorite section - part hypothetical final exam for an MBA, which is heartbreaking and hilarious over the span of about five pages).

I definitely see why many people dislike this book. The characters are hard to love, and there isn't much external action, plus the constant irony wears on the spirit a bit. Still, for the right reader, this is a masterpiece, a quiet warning of the dangers of irony and nostalgia and interpersonal deception, and a celebration of humanity even at its most hidden. I am madly in love with this novel. ...more

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Feb 06, 2008 Bruce rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: insomniacs

In the early 1990's, the first flourish of "Generation X" novels started getting published. Writers like Douglas Coupland, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jay McInerney composed incredibly self-conscious, pretentious novels and imagined themselves the voice of a generation. What they were, in large part, was a squeaky reiteration of a far more compelling earlier cultural icon: upon closer examination, it became clear that, apparently, Generation X was almost entirely composed of squeaky-voiced Holden Cau ...more

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Jan 27, 2008 Amanda rated it did not like it

The blurb on the cover of my copy of this book, a quote from the NY Times, hovering impressively above the title, says, "Ingenious.. Phillips presents his characters with a wry generosity and haunting poingnancy to rival his wonderfully subversive wit."

To this I say "Whatever".

I was completely irritated by this book from start to finish. It was suffused by this whole eyebrows-sardonically-raised-at-everything-hipsters-too-cool-to-betray-any-enthusiasm-for-anything thing that I find insufferabl ...more

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Nov 02, 2007 Ben rated it liked it

Recommends it for: Gen-X expats

If you've ever met anyone who's been to Europe, you'll understand the humor behind these delightfully loathsome characters. Not a bad book, funny at times, annoying at others.

I liked it, but I have to admit that had I not been delayed in the airport in Nice, I never would have gotten as far as I did. Once I got home to the States I put it down for good.

4/5 of the way finished. Good read for a beach vacation in France. Not much of a page-turner though.

Actually, fuck it. It's a damn snooze fest. ...more

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Jun 27, 2008 CLM rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction

I really wanted to love this book since I am 1/4 Hungarian and feel vaguely cheated by my college's having not really endorsed study abroad until after I graduated. In addition, the concept was quite original and the author seemed very charming when I interacted with him once (and I'd already paid for my book so it wasn't cupboard love, at least, not entirely). However, I found the characters somewhat annoying and I didn't really care what happened to them. The best part of the book was the desc ...more

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Jul 07, 2011 Paul Secor rated it it was ok

Annoying American generation-Xers living in Budapest in the very early 1990's. The only interesting character in the book is somewhat of a cliche - an elderly female jazz pianist/singer who tells some great stories. It turns out that her stories probably are lies, but they're good stories, nonetheless.

...more

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Jul 15, 2015 Karen rated it liked it

This is one of those books that I had to force myself to keep reading and then was glad I did. Some memorable characters and moments and some great lines. But also not much of a plot and quite a few flashy sentences where it felt like the author was just showing off and intruding on his own work in the process.

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Nov 12, 2013 Ron Charles rated it it was amazing

If the Age of Irony reached its comic peak with David Eggers and Jonathan Franzen, it's grown to full maturity in the debut work of a young man named Arthur Phillips. Yes, ironically, the apotheosis of coolness is a novel about Budapest called "Prague" by a Midwesterner who lives in Paris.

In a story of devastating emotional accuracy, striking intelligence, and irrepressible wit, Phillips follows five friends through Hungary in 1990. Here is a lost generation that knows it's a lost generation, a ...more

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Jun 29, 2015 Tracy Sherman rated it liked it

The best way to encapsulate this book is with the words of the great observer of human nature Robert Benchley in his wonderful short piece 'Christmas Afternoon', "In the first place, there was the ennui. And such ennui as it was! A heavy, overpowering ennui, such as results from a participation in eight courses of steaming, gravied food, topping off with salted nuts which the little old spinster Gummidge from Oak Hill said she never knew when to stop eating--and true enough she didn't--a draggin The best way to encapsulate this book is with the words of the great observer of human nature Robert Benchley in his wonderful short piece 'Christmas Afternoon', "In the first place, there was the ennui. And such ennui as it was! A heavy, overpowering ennui, such as results from a participation in eight courses of steaming, gravied food, topping off with salted nuts which the little old spinster Gummidge from Oak Hill said she never knew when to stop eating--and true enough she didn't--a dragging, devitalizing ennui, which left its victims strewn about the living-room in various attitudes of prostration suggestive of those of the petrified occupants in a newly unearthed Pompeiian dwelling; an ennui which carried with it a retinue of yawns, snarls and thinly veiled insults, and which ended in ruptures in the clan spirit serious enough to last throughout the glad new year."

I remember when Arthur Phillips' Prague came out and all the glowing reviews, The amazing, heartfelt, intellectual praise from every reviewer, every paper, every magazine. I remember thinking to myself, "I've got to read this book!"

Then slowly came some tiny voices amid the howls.... "You know, Prague is really pretty trite", "Prague is actually kind of boring", "If the book was cut in half it would still be a bit long", "What's the point?"

After reading these revised opinions, mind you this book was still high up in everyone's top 10 list, I decided I have no interest in reading this.

Then it appeared on my book club list of July books, of course I voted against it but I was outnumbered.

I can see why the other members of my book group would want to read this, The storie is about ex-pat Americans, Canadians etc in Hungary. All of us in the book group are, or have been ex-pats, now in Japan. Still an ex-pat is an ex-pat.

The book hits all the ex-pat touchstones: the exciting exoticness of your new location and the longing for your hometown and the familiar. Getting a chance to meet new and interesting people, and hopefully sleeping with them, and the tiredness of being different from them and never fitting in. The bitching and moaning and the, "why can't they do it like we do it back home" conversations that are legion for ex-pats.
But truth be told… Those conversations are awfully boring and the people having them are equally boring. Honestly I've done my best to keep away from most ex-pats in the 11 years I've lived in Japan.
But I bit the bullet and read this book, and for most of it I was pleasantly surprised and quite enjoyed it. But the ennui.... The ennui. I had the feeling by the end of the book that not only were the characters sick of the story and of Hungary, but that the author was also. At that point there is no amount of pithy phrases, droll observations, casual sex, Paprikash, or Unicum to soothe your soul. It's best to just close the book and go back home.

Although I still want to drink some Unicum. ...more

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Jan 26, 2013 Bruce rated it really liked it

On Arthur Phillips’ website, the following pivotal passage is included in the synopsis of Prague, his first novel:

"What does it mean to fret about your fledgling career when the man across the table was tortured by two different regimes? How does your short, uneventful life compare to the lives of those who actually resisted, fought, and died? What does your angst mean in a city still pocked with bullet holes from war and crushed rebellion?"

These words are placed in the mouths of the novel’s pri On Arthur Phillips’ website, the following pivotal passage is included in the synopsis of Prague, his first novel:

"What does it mean to fret about your fledgling career when the man across the table was tortured by two different regimes? How does your short, uneventful life compare to the lives of those who actually resisted, fought, and died? What does your angst mean in a city still pocked with bullet holes from war and crushed rebellion?"

These words are placed in the mouths of the novel’s principal characters, a group of twentysomething American expatriates who seek adventure and understanding in the newly freed Eastern bloc. And what struck me in reading the passage was that this outsized narrative covering a year’s time in 1990-91 Budapest is remarkable ten years after its publication not only for its wit, style, and poignancy, but also for its portrayal of a world in which very little has changed. Emerging from the novel, one could easily see young Americans today asking exactly the same questions and arriving at exactly the same non-answers in post-revolutionary Tunisia or Egypt.

In other words, the story resonates. But that resonance comes not only from the moment in history the story captures, but also from the author’s seemingly effortless command of his art. Each sitting takes the reader on a gliding ride through imagery and emotion that is vivid, at times piercing, but always easy to digest. Even the massive interlude Phillips injects in Part Two is completely painless, and in fact invigorating. Here we are treated to hundreds of years of Hungarian history given as backstory for one of the novel’s few aged characters, a device that illuminates the character, takes us on a exhilarating flight, and lays a solid foundation for the remainder of the story.

As it turns out, I have once again let a book sit on the shelf for much too long. Phillips has delivered four novels since Prague, all to great critical acclaim. But I figure arriving at the party late is much preferred to not arriving at all.
...more

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May 16, 2015 Daniel Simmons rated it liked it

I have very much enjoyed other books by this author ("The Egyptologist" and "The Tragedy of Arthur" in particular). Phillips is a writer who wears his smarts on his sleeve, which can induce both admiration and frustration from me depending on my mood and my concentration. I found this book to be slow going, perhaps because the narrative sometimes mirrors the aimlessness of its main characters, but there are scenes of undeniable greatness; the second section in particular, about the history of th ...more

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Jun 17, 2010 Jonfaith rated it really liked it

Less than two weeks after I read this novel I was crossing the Danube with the woman I would soon marry. Happenstance, possibly, but the trepidation felt in the novel on the Chain Bridge was echoed in my own experience.

There is thus an aspect of Arthur Phillips which I would love to thank for distilling such a moment, allowing it to suspend and pulse, thus securing it in my mind on that sunny Hungarian afternoon.

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Apr 27, 2012 Elyse Walters rated it really liked it

Read this a long time ago --and loved it....

Would like to read his book "The Tragedy of Arthur" sometime, also! ...more

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Jun 28, 2015 William rated it really liked it

Really enjoyed this. Minus one star for being heavy-handed at times.

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Oct 21, 2017 Ali rated it did not like it

Shelves: hungary-budapest, central-europe

White. Male. Privilege. If you want to read an overlong dictionary definition of white male privilege (WMP), read this book and then try not to shoot yourself in the face. Three more words: Good. Freaking. God. Reading this book was so draining, and I usually quit books I don't like, but I felt the need to see this one through because I like Budapest so much.

This is the plot: Four horrible men and one unlikeable woman, Americans all, go to Budapest in 1990 to exploit the new system of Democracy White. Male. Privilege. If you want to read an overlong dictionary definition of white male privilege (WMP), read this book and then try not to shoot yourself in the face. Three more words: Good. Freaking. God. Reading this book was so draining, and I usually quit books I don't like, but I felt the need to see this one through because I like Budapest so much.

This is the plot: Four horrible men and one unlikeable woman, Americans all, go to Budapest in 1990 to exploit the new system of Democracy and behave horribly, whine endlessly, roll their eyes constantly, treat the locals like crap, drink, smoke, and have sex. This reads like a so-called Gen X novel written 10 years past due and it is as horrible as anything that ilk threw up in the late 80s/early 90s (I'm a Gen-Xer but can't relate to the genre). In the too-long Prague—set entirely in Budapest; the title self-deprecatingly references the "cooler" city to the north—all the WMP elements are in place: Snide, snarky, wealthy men with zero empathy or sense of self, descend on this lovely city and sleep and steal their way through a single year.

The side characters are unbearably cliche: There's a token magic black guy who schools the most-tedious main character on why things are the way they are; the plucky-and-kooky (yet wise) female artist who schools the tedious main character on why things are the way they are; the mysterious gypsy chanteuse, who—take a wild guess!—and the aging Hungarian hero who rises to the occasion and sets a noble example for the tedious main character that he—no surprise—is utterly incapable of following or understanding.

Sidebar: The book contains long descriptions of "sexy" artworks created by the kooky girl and they're very pretentious, if not gag-worthy. Skip over these parts unless you are a masochist.

Everything about this book is so WMP tedious, including the cool-dude author photo, his snide author bio, and the pretentious, fawning blurbs on the jacket supplied by his peers. We get it: You're a "Harvard man," obviously accepted into the right fraternity, and now your bros, babes, and wannabes bros and babes are paying it forward, calling you the next Hemingway and Fitzgerald. (Maybe they're right, because those guys were also over-privileged and occasionally wrote unreadable drivel.)

Look, I know it's a thing for young people to barge into European cities and sow their oats. I myself traveled to Prague in the early 1990s to "become a writer" and the place was jumping and felt like a hedonistic wonderland. I can't claim to have been on perfect behavior during my time there, but unlike the characters in Prague, I actually enjoyed meeting as many locals as possible and seeing the sites. The boys in the book are the kind of awful, ungrateful men you really, really try and avoid if you're a woman backpacking around Europe. So, it's offensive that Prague sits at the top of so many lists of books you (meaning white men) "must read" before you go to Budapest (much like the awful Dud Avocado being a must-read before you—meaning vapid women—go to Paris). It only reinforces the ugly American frat-bro/ho stereotype.

Here is a better list of books to read, depending on what vibe you're going for: The Door, The Radetzky March, The Invisible Bridge, Fateless, The Bridge at Andau. I hope more authors write more often about this lovely city so that people who want to read about Budapest—but not about womanizing bros and vapid chicks—have more to choose from than "Prague." ...more

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Feb 12, 2008 Nancy Oakes rated it really liked it

Shelves: american-fiction

Frankly, I am totally amazed by the number of people who absolutely hated this book. I thought it was excellent, and even though it took me about a week to read it, when I would have to put it down I couldn't wait to get back to it. Would I recommend it? Yes. It is an intense book, though, and I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone -- it would be for those who aren't in any hurry for action or expect that the author is just going to tell you up front what the book is going to be about. This is d Frankly, I am totally amazed by the number of people who absolutely hated this book. I thought it was excellent, and even though it took me about a week to read it, when I would have to put it down I couldn't wait to get back to it. Would I recommend it? Yes. It is an intense book, though, and I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone -- it would be for those who aren't in any hurry for action or expect that the author is just going to tell you up front what the book is going to be about. This is definitely one of the finest works of literature I have read in a very long time and it does demand reader interaction & patience. It's a book that you'll think about after it's all over.

Let me offer you a quotation from the author, who spent time in Budapest, the setting of the novel (not Prague, which is more like a metaphor). It will pretty much sum up the feel the author is trying to create in the novel:

"For some people I knew, the ear-popping pressure of so much history and self-consciousness made it hard to get up in the morning, to justify your lunch, let alone your existence. What does it mean to tell a girl you ache for her as the two of you stand in front of a building with bullet holes in it? What does it mean to fret about your fledgling and blatantly temporary career when the man next to you managed to get himself tortured by the secret police of two different regimes? How do you compare your short and uneventful life to the lives of those who actually rebelled, fought, died, sinned? Does the present owe a debt to the past? Will this place be remembered, and me with it? Maybe this would all feel more real if I were elsewhere… But who do I talk to about this, when the only language everyone seems to speak is cast-iron irony?"

Prague is not just a story about expats who find their way to Budapest. It is also a story about those who have lived in Hungary under different occupations, including the Nazis & Communists, and how they've had to recreate themselves to survive, often clashing with entrenched cultural values.

Set in 1990, shortly after the fall of the Wall in 1989, it begins by introducing the expat group: Mark Payton, who is writing his dissertation on Nostalgia; Charles Gabor, whose parents escaped from Hungary in 1956 and who want Charles to reclaim what is rightfully his now that the Communists are de-nationalizing former private property while he wants to make a fortune & indeed works for a firm of venture capitalists who according to him are worthless; Emily Oliver, who is in Hungary to work at the American embassy there, a job she got from her father's influence; Scott Price, who came to get away from his family whom he cannot stand, who ends up teaching English. The final member of this group is John Price, the main character, who follows his brother to Hungary and takes a job as a journalist for a periodical called BudapesToday.

To be honest, I cannot do this book justice in my own words, but it is a fine piece of writing that should be read slowly. ...more

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Jun 07, 2009 christa rated it it was ok

I deserve a big, fat, chocolate-covered "I told you so." Arthur Phillips' "Prague" is, interesting-wise, the exact inverse of his most-recent novel "The Song is You," interesting-wise.

Damn if I didn't fall hard in the early chapters, which find a handful of 20-something ex-pats in Budapest in 1990: John, the laid back, love-lorn accidental journalist has followed his brother Scott, a formerly obese exercise-hound who's desire to shed pounds equals his desire to shed his past, Emily, a plain-old I deserve a big, fat, chocolate-covered "I told you so." Arthur Phillips' "Prague" is, interesting-wise, the exact inverse of his most-recent novel "The Song is You," interesting-wise.

Damn if I didn't fall hard in the early chapters, which find a handful of 20-something ex-pats in Budapest in 1990: John, the laid back, love-lorn accidental journalist has followed his brother Scott, a formerly obese exercise-hound who's desire to shed pounds equals his desire to shed his past, Emily, a plain-old Nebraska good girl who cannot tell a lie, and Charles, the flesh-pressing leader of the troupe and the Canadian, Mark, who is on the surface, compulsively studying nostalgia, while quietly going insane.

Part I hyper-exposes them as cliches of the 20-something world travelers in a way that made me swoon and giggle and love each of them despite their know-it-all, on-top-of-the-world bravado. Part II shifts focus to the elderly Imre Horvath's past in relation to Hungary's past, and the publishing house his forefathers built. Good God. The whole thing reminded me of that awful semester in college where I ended up slogging toward a C in a history class I hated. Unfortunately, Imre Horvath's chapters are crucial to the next two sections of the book, business relationships and more history, nearly impossible to focus on, given the circumference of my permanent yawn.

To be fair, there are still occasional gems in this novel, that kept me from using it to roast S'mores. Nicky, a bald bisexual artist who is both hands on and hands off with John, is a great character -- especially when she seduces the all-American snore, whom John thinks is the love of his life, Emily. And even in the bitterly blase end, there are entire paragraphs that are utterly fantastic:

"He could not stomach setting off into 1991 with any of the others, not even Karen Whitley, who had lately donned a transparent attitude of jaded, sophisticated, take-it-or-leave-it disappointment, laced with a golden thread of ironic guilt-mongering, dusted all over with a heady vanilla body-spray scent of still-available."

Ha! I've met her before.

Plus, Phillips does some interesting things with structure. For instance, shifting perspective between two characters in alternating paragraphs; List-making, with lists so long that you forget you are reading a list.

This is, very obviously, the same person who wrote "The Song is You." I'd recognize the elaborate metaphors, even if they were wearing a fedora, trench coat and awkward sunglasses. It's just that in this novel, it is exhausting; In "The Song is You," it becomes part of the charm.
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Apr 22, 2010 Xon rated it liked it

I found this book ironic and somewhat interesting mostly because of the crcumstances in which I read it. I picked this up in a book store right before I left for Europe where I struggled for a few weeks on which cities to visit. I chose Prague and ended up passing on Budapest. This entire book takes place in Budapest and is entitled Prague only to further the main theme, which centers on the emotion of life being elsewhere. It's a "grass is greener" feeling that Phillips explains as: "if only I ...more

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Dec 09, 2009 Eszter rated it it was ok

upper-middle-class american twentysomethings come of age obnoxiously in budapest directly after the fall of communism. as a hungarian, i am left with a slightly unpleasant taste in my mouth despite phillips' "i'm joking/i'm not joking/but really, i swear, i'm joking/okay, now start digging for my actual meaning" business up in this book and the two years he spent in budapest that clearly qualify him to talk trash/not talk trash/really, it's talking trash/but no seriously, he's making insightful ...more

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Feb 12, 2009 Sharon rated it did not like it

Shelves: nook

So I got suckered in by the comparison to Kundera. Wrong! This book was a struggle to get through and maybe I should have quit was back in the beginning but I have this thing about finishing. I have to finish what I start. (Which is why I don't start unless I know I can finish.)

Anyway, this book was NOT about Prague but about Budapest. So why title it Prague? I guess the author was being clever. Too clever for me because I was half way through and re-read the review to realize John Price was the ...more

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Feb 21, 2009 Diana rated it did not like it

overdone and overwritten.

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Feb 26, 2020 Victoria Rodríguez rated it it was amazing

Wow, this is true literature, an incredible work of art. The narrative is more descriptive but it is absolutely amazing. Although the title is Prague, most of the story happens in Budapest (Hungary).
Budapest was becoming a very important city shortly, after the fall of the Soviet Union, this story takes place in the year 1990. There were 5 Americans ex-pats who arrived to Budapest seeking a successful career and of course their fortune. I loved the character of John, how he was discovering aspec ...more

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Mar 07, 2019 Aneece rated it really liked it

Shelves: novel

Really appreciated the insuperable cluelessness of the protagonist. He is surrounded by people who know what's going on and what they're doing about it, while he has no idea. Very relatable.

Lot's of laugh-out-loud moments. My favorite:

"Okay, so are you guys all into Rambo?"
Through gulps of pilsner and melting cheese, the three marines made derisive comments, pretty cool but unrealistic... all about ego... totally stupid. Gunnery Sergeant Marcus added. "I've read some of it, but I prefer Verlai

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Dec 30, 2014 Sheri rated it really liked it

Shelves: poverty-class-issues, male-female-power-sex-attractivenes

This is a book that I want to give 5 stars; it is full of intelligent, witty commentary and done artfully (if slightly gimmicky with the lists and the “business master’s questions”). But it was just too boring. Phillips is so damn full of himself (going so far as to title the book Prague, even though it was set in Budapest as a simultaneous comment about the inter-changeability of everything and a nod to the Utopian ideal) and verbose at times (the lists of descriptions made me want to vomit upo This is a book that I want to give 5 stars; it is full of intelligent, witty commentary and done artfully (if slightly gimmicky with the lists and the “business master’s questions”). But it was just too boring. Phillips is so damn full of himself (going so far as to title the book Prague, even though it was set in Budapest as a simultaneous comment about the inter-changeability of everything and a nod to the Utopian ideal) and verbose at times (the lists of descriptions made me want to vomit upon occasion: “Hungarian countryside, traditional dolls, china, crystal, paprika. German businessmen, their dress white socks flashing form under the cuffs of their shiny suits, entered hard currency banks and hard currency stores off-limits to the gooey-currency natives”), that I felt like I was slogging my way through it, rather than enjoying it.

The tone (expat and lots of bar scenes) reminded me of Fitzgerald, but in general Phillips is more conscious of himself. I could just feel the author trying too frequently.

The most obvious theme was nostalgia; not only do we have Mark and his research, but Imre and his printing business, John’s brow beating (this is the moment he’ll remember): “The most important day of your life, a wonderful moment, but to know it as it happens, you feel like God Himself is holding you up in His hand” and his obsession with Nadja and her stories. Scott is really the only character plagued by his past; Imre indulges in a bit of revisionist history by not claiming his illegitimate children.

Along with nostalgia is the question of modernity. Phillips quips that “No one ever knew they were old-fashioned; everyone always thought they were up-to-the-minute: Rickety Model T cars weren’t rickety when they were invented, scratchy radio wasn’t scratchy until television, and silent movies weren’t a feeble precursor of talkies until there were talkies” and I am tempted to agree. Except the newest trend is to accept that we are ALWAYS obsolete. We upgrade phones and cars and computers and tablets on a continual basis with the understanding that whatever we buy now will be replaced within a few months (I mean really, do we need 6 versions of the iphone and 5 of the Samsung Galaxy?).

Briefly, Phillips touches on another of my favorite themes: happiness. Emily and John address it the most directly (but still in an oblique fashion) with their examples of purity and debauchery. I did enjoy John’s conclusion that happiness comes from correct categorization (can we all site the serenity prayer?): “By then, John understood that some things mattered and some things did not and that the happy people in the world were those who could easily and rapidly distinguish between the two. The term unhappiness referred to the feeling of taking the wrong things seriously.”

I found some of the Hungarian translations hysterical and I especially loved the cultural references in language usage. My favorite was the discussion between Mark and his lover about how to ask for the time in Hungarian. Mark says what he thinks is appropriate and is told that the correct translation for what he said is essentially: “excuse me for bothering you, very high up sir, I am nothing, you are a big important person, we are from different classes, I am like an animal. I am guilty to bother you and you are ashameful to talk to me, but I am too poor to own a watch and too scared to go into a store to look at a clock, I am dirt, but can you please, please, be good and tell me what time is it and then maybe spit on me if you like, since I am only a little faggot to you?” In American slang, we can say “Hey, what’s the time?” to anyone; but in Communist-Soviet-controlled Hungary class is as (or more) important than in pre-revolution aristocratic times.

This is just a little thing, but stupid editorial mistake. On page 5, it says that Mark has been in Budapest 2 months and on pg 7 it says 3 weeks. Should have been consistently one or the other on this morning of the opening game of Sincerity.

Overall it was good, but I can only give it 4 stars and warn readers of the focus required to slog through. ...more

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