For centuries, Prague has inspired thousands of artists, painters, and writers. Authors like Umberto Eco, Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera, Phillip Roth, Miloš Urban, Bohumil Hrabal, and now Dan Brown, bring their readers to the streets of Prague. Explore the city with their books (and of course, "Kudy z nudy" - a guidebook!), and see Prague Castle, the streets of Old Town and New Town, or the Lesser Town through the eyes of their literary characters. Many fascinating experiences, both literary and beyond, await you! Prague is a city that can be read like a novel – in chapters, with recurring themes, and through the footsteps of famous authors. Venture into the streets, cafes, gardens, and old buildings where stories were born...

The places described in the following ten books are diverse, but they share one thing in common: the authors were captivated by the city, the landscape, and the breathtaking history of this country in the heart of Europe. Supernatural, philosophical, and satirical novels from world literature can serve as unusual guides on your journey through Prague.
 

Dan Brown: The Da Vinci Code

Discover Prague full of secrets through the eyes of bestselling author Dan Brown! Brown set "The Da Vinci Code" in the heart of Prague, making the city another of the main characters in his story. Robert Langdon and Katherine Solomon wander through Old Town Square and the labyrinthine streets of the Jewish Quarter, cross Charles Bridge, ascend to Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral, and visit the Baroque library in the Clementinum. Readers can therefore see the book as an alternative guide to Prague, where, alongside the tourist icons, there are also hidden corners and mysterious legends. The story also takes place in a winter Prague – and that's no coincidence. It's a subtle invitation for tourists to discover our metropolis even outside of the main season!
 
The author has a personal connection to Prague – he has visited it seven times, even as a child. He admits with a smile that he has tasted Czech "tlačenka" (a type of sausage), and although the world knows the Czech Republic mainly as a beer-producing powerhouse, he prefers wine. He named one of the characters, Captain Janáček, after the famous Czech composer. And although Brown's novels seem monumental, they are created gradually, through a daily routine: the writer gets up at four in the morning and sits down to write every day without fail.

Bohumil Hrabal: The Automatic World

Although Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997), a writer with a distinctive and unmistakable narrative style, was born in Brno, a large part of his life was connected to Prague. He writes about it mainly in "Too Loud a Solitude," "The Gentle Barbarian," "Weddings at the Dome," "Poetry Clubs," or "The Automatic World." You will find Hrabal's traces not only in the old Libně district (such as on Na Hrázi street, where the Hrabal Wall commemorates him), but also in his favorite pubs. The most famous of these is the U Zlatého tygra restaurant on Husova Street in Old Town, where he sat in the back room under the "small antlers" and where many famous personalities, from Václav Havel and US President Bill Clinton to Alexander Dubček and Prague native Madeleine Albright, used to visit him.

Miloš Urban: The Seven-Chapel

In the Gothic novel "Sedmikostelí" (Seven Churches), the writer Miloš Urban (*1967) captures the magical atmosphere of the city and the fascinating sacred geometry of Nové Město, with its Přemyslovská and Lucemburská lines. The story takes place within the area defined by six Gothic churches, which serve not only as an attractive and mysterious backdrop, but also play a central role in the novel.

Miloš Urban received the Magnesia Litera literary award for his novel "Hastrman." The novel "Lord Mord" is also dedicated to Prague and is set at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, during the period of urban renewal of the Old Town.

Zdeněk Jirotka: Saturnin

The elegant Imperial café, the Church of St. Ludmila in Náměstí Míru, or the Legii Bridge: these are the places where you can embark on a journey with Zdeněk Jirotka (1911–2003) and his novel "Saturnin." For several generations of readers, it has been considered the best humorous book in Czech literature. This cheerful book was created during the dark times of the Protectorate, and Jirotka even wrote a significant portion of the novel in the bathroom of his Prague apartment. Why? Because there was no window there, so he didn't need blackout curtains for the air raids. Jirotka himself jokingly said that perhaps all that water in the novel was due to his work in the bathroom.

The most famous works of the British humorist Jerome Klapka Jerome (1859–1927) are the celebrated books "Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)" and its loose sequel, "Three Men on the Bummel." In the latter, he describes a cycling trip he took with his friends in Germany at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, including visits to what was then Austria-Hungary and Prague. The narrator and his friends, George and Harris, wandered into the Jewish ghetto, wanting to see where Jan Hus preached and where Jan Žižka led his Hussite troops. A quarter of a century later, in his autobiography "My Life and Times," Klapka recalled their guide at the time: "Years ago, I encountered a rogue in Prague who pretended to be a guide. He was learning English from a person of Scottish origin in New York. I can say for myself that I didn't understand a word he said."

Several Prague defenestrations also intrigued the English, and you can read about them in the eighth chapter of the book: "...perhaps Prague could have avoided half of its troubles if it had fewer large and attractively suitable windows. The first of these major catastrophes was triggered by throwing seven Catholic councilors out of the windows of their town hall onto the Hussite rebels. And the second occurred later, when royal governors were thrown out of the windows of the ancient castle in Hradčany – this was the second Prague defenestration. Since then, many fatal problems have been decided in Prague; but since they were resolved without violence, it can probably be assumed that they were discussed in the cellars. A window, as an argument, would probably always have been too strong a temptation for any devout Prague resident."

Angelo Maria Ripellino: Magical Prague

Italian professor of Slavic studies and promoter of Czech culture, Angelo Maria Ripellino (1923–1978), created a compelling portrait of Prague from the post-White Mountain period to August 1968. In a book likened to an Arcimboldo collage, legends intertwine with reality, and on its pages you will meet alchemists, painters, and poets, as well as the Golem, Švejk, and Rudolf II. You will discover Prague as a mystical place, shrouded in romantic myths, a city of eccentrics, alchemists, and artists, imbued with a mysterious magical atmosphere that is not easily forgotten.

Egon Erwin Kisch: Prague Anecdotes

Few people knew Prague as intimately as the journalist and passionate reporter Egon Erwin Kisch (1885–1948). Among his most famous works, from this author who is unjustly overlooked in our country, is "Pražský pitaval," a collection of highly successful reports, sketches, stories, and notorious legal cases from Prague and Bohemia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Kisch gathered the facts for "Pražský pitaval" over many decades, and the result is a book full of sensational stories about various swindlers, thieves, murderers, spies, and other characters from Prague's picturesque underworld. Kisch's most famous work was first published in Berlin in 1931, and Czech readers read it in translation two years later.

Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The novelist, poet, essayist, translator, and playwright Milan Kundera (1929–2023) is the most successful author of Czech origin in the world. In the novel, set against the backdrop of the Prague Spring of 1968, the stories of the doctor Tomáš, his wife Tereza, and the painter Sabina unfold, depicting the bleak life in the normalized Czechoslovakia. The book was first published in French in 1984 in Paris, and a year later in Czech in Canada by Sixty-Eight Publishers. Kundera's last book is "The Festival of Insignificance," which was published in September 2020. kudyznudy.cz/gnews.cz