Eastern European Booklist

I’ve been drawing together some notes on Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria). I find myself with this list of books who have no common theme other than the fact that I liked them and they made a dent on me. This isn’t all that I’ve read on the subject—nor even all that I’ve learned from—but they are they ones that I most want to hang onto.

Istvan Bart, Hungary and the Hungarians (ISBN-10 9631348482; ISBN-13: 978-9631348484). Okay, this one is pretty obscure (why I’ve included the ISBNs). I found it in French (apparently the original language); Amazon lists an English version, but marks it “unavailable.” If anybody knows where I can get a copy, give me a headsup (update: thanks, Larry!). Meanwhile, it is the kind of thing the language-proud French do really well: a kind of “keyword encyclopedias” of Hungarian culture, via Hungarian language. I know zilch Hungarian and I haven’t the slightest intention of learning any. But this book is a wonderful browser and gives you at least the illusion that you are learning to penetrate a cultural fog.

Brigitte Hamman, Hitler’s Vienna. It’s a trip to go to the Vienna StaatsOper and to remember Hitler in attendance there (standing room) back when he was a rootless young nobody.

Jaroslav Hašek. The Good Soldier Švejk. Not a novel, really, but more a succession of sketches, like a Sunday funny paper, with the same character getting into predictably comical scrapes. Two interesting things about this book: one, it’s that rare novel that really tries to tell you something about “just people,” rather than sensitive, artistic types. The other is how popular it appears to remain among the Czechs. How many countries make a national hero out of a simpleton? I sometimes think that the Czech republic, tucked away in the remnants of the old Austrian Empire, on the edge of the old German Empire, can claim the appellation sometimes attributed to North Carolina—a vale of humility between two mountains of conceit.

Franz Kafka, The Castle. I remember reading somewhere—Walker Percy?—that Kafka’s first readers (listeners?) in Prague used to collapse in helpless hilarity. Oh my God, they would say, he’s got us to the life (I’ve heard the same thing about Russians and Chekov). You can make sense out of Kafka anywhere, but somehow he makes more sense in Prague, once you understand a bit about his position as a German Jew in a Slav culture (for details, go here). And Prague actually has a castle. Bet they never told you that in your college lit class.

Heda Margolius Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star. I’ve written about this before as one of the great holocaust survival memoirs. It’s also important for getting a sense of the past that Czechs still bear.

Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. I am never quite sure whether to count Kundera as a Czech writer or a Parisian expat. I nominate this if for no other reason, then because of the film version—one of the best upscale blue movies ever. Man, the things that girl can do with a bowler hat …

John Lukacs, Budapest 1900. Still a fine book for getting a feel of Budapest itself, and more generally for the souring of nationalism at the end of the 19^th Century.

Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March. For my money, Roth is the go-to guy for the look and feel of the declining Austro-Hungarian Empire. It’s amazing how fully realized a world he builds into this not-very-long novel, and how much it sticks with you.

Karl Tschuppik, The Reign of Emperor Francis Joseph, 1848-1916. Okay, another obscure entry. Tschuppik is hardly state-of-the-art history, but he gives you the feel of the old empire from the standpoint of someone who remembers it with wry nostalgia.

Stefan Zweig, Beware of Pity. Others might suggest his non-fiction account, The World of Yesterday¸ which has its merits, but I think this novel does a better job of conveying the tang of the years leading up to World War I.