The golden maze : a biography of Prague /
Richard Fidler.
- Sydney, NSW : ABC Books, 2020.
- 580 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 22 cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1990 -- The stone crown of the world -- The night of Antichrist -- The great work -- A bohemia of the soul -- Sleeping on a volcano -- The Black Crow -- From darkness into darkness -- Be with us. We are with you. -- The second culture -- To light the magic lantern -- Together alone.
In 1989, Richard Fidler was living in London as part of the provocative Australian comedy trio The Doug Anthony All Stars when revolution broke out across Europe. Excited by this galvanising historic, human, moment, he travelled to Prague, where a decrepit police state was being overthrown by crowds of ecstatic citizens. His experience of the Velvet Revolution never let go of him. Thirty years later Fidler returns to Prague to uncover the glorious and grotesque history of Europe's most instagrammed and uncanny city: a jumble of gothic towers, baroque palaces and zig-zag lanes that has survived plagues, pogroms, Nazi terror and Soviet tanks. Founded in the ninth Century, Prague gave the world the golem, the robot, and the world's biggest statue of Stalin, a behemoth that killed almost everyone who touched it.