Description

A brief review of Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century in Reference and Research Book News.

Referencing Walter Benjamin's essay "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century" in his title, a text that was penned in order to elicit support for a much larger planned project seeking to excavate the "prehistory of modernity" out of analyzing the material fabric and cultural artifacts of 19th-century Paris--later published in 1999 as The Arcades Project--Sayer (cultural history, Lancaster U., England) explicitly frames this work as a similar project concerned with how the examination of the 20th-century city of Prague allows for the excavation of the "prehistory of postmodernity." Focusing on the interwar and the immediate postwar years, Sayer explores the cultural production (literature, art, architecture, music, etc.) of Prague, positioning it as a crossroads of 20th-century cultural trends and as one of the great centers of surrealism