In this new novel by the celebrated author of The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague, Prokop Poupa, a professor of literature in Prague, is dismissed by the communist regime and reduced to working as a cleaner in a block of flats. He negotiates this diminished existence among a circle of dissidents, until his young son emigrates with his former wife to England, and the arrival of the Velvet Revolution finds Prokop haunted by past bereavements and betrayals and unable to reintegrate himself into society with its new challenges.
In this new novel by the celebrated author of The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague, Prokop Poupa, a professor of literature in Prague, is dismissed by the communist regime and reduced to working as a cleaner in a block of flats. He negotiates this diminished existence among a circle of dissidents, until his young son emigrates with his former wife to England, and the arrival of the Velvet Revolution finds Prokop haunted by past bereavements and betrayals and unable to reintegrate himself into society with its new challenges.
In this new novel by the celebrated author of The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague, Prokop Poupa, a professor of literature in Prague, is dismissed by the communist regime and reduced to working as a cleaner in a block of flats. He negotiates this diminished existence among a circle of dissidents, until his young son emigrates with his former wife to England, and the arrival of the Velvet Revolution finds Prokop haunted by past bereavements and betrayals and unable to reintegrate himself into society with its new challenges.
Winner of Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award 1994
Sylvie Germain was born in Chateauroux in Central France in 1954. She read philosophy at the Sorbonne, being awarded a doctorate. From 1987 until the summer of 1993 she taught philosophy at the French School in Prague. She now lives in Angouleme. Sylvie Germain is the author of thirteen works of fiction, eleven of which have been published by Dedalus, a study of the painter Vermeer and a religious meditation. Her work has been translated into twenty one languages and has received worldwide acclaim. Sylvie Germain's first novel The Book of Nights was published to France to great acclaim in 1985. It has won five literary prizes as well as the TLS Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize in England.The novel's story is continued in Night of Amber in 1987. Her third novel Days of Anger won the Prix Femina in 1989. It was followed by The Medusa Child in 1991 and The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague in 1992, the beginning of her Prague trilogy, continued with Infinite Possibilities in 1993 and then Invitation to a Journey (L'Eclats du sel). The Book of Tobias saw a return to rural France and la France profonde, followed in 2002 by The Song of False Lovers (Chanson des Mal-Aimants).
In this new novel by the celebrated author of The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague, Prokop Poupa, a professor of literature in Prague, is dismissed by the communist regime and reduced to working as a cleaner in a block of flats. He negotiates this diminished existence among a circle of dissidents, until his young son emigrates with his former wife to England, and the arrival of the Velvet Revolution finds Prokop haunted by past bereavements and betrayals and unable to reintegrate himself into society with its new challenges.
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