The Czech Reader

Product Description

The Czech Reader brings together more than 150 primary texts & illustrations to convey the dramatic history of the Czechs, from the emergence of the Czech state in the tenth century, through the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 & the Czech Republic in 1993, into the twenty-first century. The Slav-speaking Czechs have lived for more than a millennium surrounded on three sides by German-speaking people. The Czechs have preserved their language, traditions, & customs, despite their incorporation into the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Third Reich, & the Eastern Bloc. Organized chronologically, the selections in The Czech Reader include the letter to the Czech people written by the religious reformer & national hero Jan Hus in 1415, & Charter 77, the founding document of an influential anticommunist initiative launched in 1977 in reaction to the arrest of the Plastic People of the Universe, an underground rock b&. There is a speech given in 1941 by Reinhard Heydrich, a senior Nazi official & Deputy Reich-Protector of Bohemia & Moravia, as well as one written by Vaclav Havel in 1984 for an occasion abroad, but read by the Czech-born British dramatist Tom Stoppard, since Havel, the dissident playwright & future national leader, was not allowed to leave Czechoslovakia. Among the songs, poems, folklore, fiction, plays, paintings, & photographs of monuments & architectural landmarks are ” Let Us Rejoice, ” the most famous chorus from Bedrich Smetana`s comic opera The Bartered Bride; a letter the composer Antonin Dvorak sent from New York, where he directed the National Conservatory of Music in the 1890s; a story by Franz Kafka; & an excerpt from Milan Kundera`s The Joke. Intended for travellers, students, & scholars alike, The Czech Reader is a rich introduction to the turbulent history & resilient culture of the Czech people.