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Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia

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Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia

Winner of the Europe Book Prize

One of Europeâ€™s most preeminent investigative journalists travels to the Czech Republicâ€”the Czech half of the former Czechoslovakia, the land that brought us Kafkaâ€”to explore the surreal fictions and the extraordinary reality of its twentieth century.

For example, thereâ€™s the story of the small businessman who adopted Henry Fordâ€™s ideas on productivity to create the worldâ€™s largest shoe companyâ€”and hired modernist giants such as Le Corbusier to design his company towns (which were also the birthplaces of Ivana Trump and Tom Stoppard).

Or the story of Kafkaâ€™s niece, who loaned her name to writers blacklisted under the Communist regime so they could keep publishing.

Or the story of the singer Karel Gott, winner of the countryâ€™s Best Male Vocalist Award thirty-six years in a row, whose summer home, Gottland, is the Czech Dollywood.

Based on meticulous research and hundreds of interviews with everyone from filmmakers to writers to pop stars to ordinary citizens, Gottland is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a resilient people living through difficult and often bizarre timesâ€”equally funny, disturbing, stirring and absurdÂ .â€‰.â€‰. in a word, Kafkaesque.

From the Hardcover edition.

Country	USA
Author	Mariusz Szczygiel
Binding	Kindle Edition
EISBN	9781612193144
Format	Kindle eBook
Label	Melville House
Manufacturer	Melville House
NumberOfPages	290
PublicationDate	2014-05-27
Publisher	Melville House
ReleaseDate	2014-05-27
Studio	Melville House

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