Prague

Zusatztext “Ingenious...Phillips presents his characters with a wry generosity and haunting poignancy to rival his wonderfully subversive wit.” —The New York Times “Wry and skillful...a rare balance of wisdom and imagination.” —The New York Times Book Review “Stop yearning for that elegant! entertaining novel that used to be. Thanks to Phillips! it’s right here! right now.” —Newsweek “Rhapsodic.” —The Washington Post Book World “Heartbreaking...a masterpiece of caustic satire.” —Los Angeles Times “Really an old-fashioned novel of ideas...very funny...likely to leave you aching! too.” —The New Yorker “Few first novels blaze with such all-knowing poise....Phillips is a wisecracking microbiologist of society and spirit.” —People Informationen zum Autor Arthur Phillips is the internationally bestselling author of three New York Times Notable Books— Prague, the winner of the Los Angeles Times /Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; The Song Is You; and The Tragedy of Arthur —and The Egyptologist. He lives in New York. Klappentext A novel of startling scope and ambition, Prague depicts an intentionally lost Lost Generation as it follows five American expats who come to Budapest in the early 1990s to seek their fortune. They harbor the vague suspicion that their counterparts in Prague have it better, but still they hope to find adventure, inspiration, a gold rush, or history in the making.PART ONE FIRSTIMPRESSIONS HE DECEPTIVELY SIMPLE RULES OF THE GAME SINCERITY, AS played late one Friday afternoon in May 1990 on the terrace of the Caf Gerbeaud in Budapest, Hungary: 1.  Players (in this case, five) arrange themselves around a small caf table and impatiently await their order, haphazardly recorded by a sulky and distracted waitress with amusing boots: dollhouse cups of espresso, dense blocks of cake glazed with Art Nouveau swirls of translucent caramel, skimpy sandwiches dusted red-orange with the national spice, glass thimbles of sweet or bitter or smoky liqueurs, tumblers of bubbling water ostensibly hunted and captured from virgin springs high in the Carpathian Mountains. 2.  Proceeding circularly, players make apparently sincere statements, one statement per turn. Verifiable statements of fact are inadmissible. Play proceeds accordingly for four rounds. In this case, the game would therefore consist of twenty apparently sincere statements. Interrupting competition with discursive or disruptive conversation, or auxiliary lies, is permitted and praiseworthy. 3.  Of the four statements a player makes during the course of the game, only one is permitted to be “true” or “sincere.” The other three are “lies.” Players closely guard the identity of their true statements, the ability to simulate embarrassment, confusion, anger, shock, or pain being highly prized. 4.  Players attempt to identify which of their opponents’ statements were true. Player A guesses which statements of players B, C, D, and E were true. Player B then does the same for players A, C, D, and E, et cetera. A scoring grid is made on a crumb-dusted cocktail napkin with a monogrammed (cmg) fountain pen. 5.  Players reveal their sincere statements. A player receives one point for each of his or her lies accepted by an opponent as true and one point for each identification of an opponent’s true statement. In today’s game of five people, a perfect score would be eight: four for leading each poor sap by the nose and four more for seeing through their feeble, transparent efforts at deception. II. SINCERITY—A STAPLE AMONG CERTAIN CIRCLES OF YOUNG FOREIGNERS living in Budapest immediately following 1989–90’s hissing, flapping deflation of Communism—is coincidentally the much-admired invention of one of the five players in this very match, this very afternoon in...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Arthur Phillips
• Editore: Random House USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 10.06.2003
• EAN: 9780375759772
• ISBN: 978-0-375-75977-2
• Pagine: 400
• Dimensioni: 132 mm x 202 mm x 20 mm
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi