Prague Spring

By: Simon Mawer

Narrated by: Ralph Lister

New York Times best-selling author Simon Mawer returns to Czechoslovakia, this time during the turbulent 1960s, with a suspenseful story of sex, politics, and betrayal.

In the summer of 1968, the year of the Prague Spring with a Cold War winter, Oxford students James Borthwick and Eleanor Pike set out to hitchhike across Europe, complicating a budding friendship that could be something more. Having reached Southern Germany, they decide on a whim to visit Czechoslovakia, where Alexander Dubcek's "socialism with a human face" is smiling on the world.

Meanwhile, Sam Wareham, first secretary at the British embassy in Prague, observes developments in the country with a diplomat's cynicism and a young man's passion. In the company of Czech student Lenka Koneckova, he finds a way into the world of Czechoslovak youth, with all its hopes and new ideas; now, nothing seems off-limits behind the Iron Curtain. But the great wheels of politics are grinding in the background; Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev is making demands of Dubcek, and the Red Army is massing on the borders.

This shrewd, engrossing, and sensual novel once again proves Simon Mawer is one of today's most talented writers of historical spy fiction.

©2018 Simon Mawer (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Pure Mawer

The banal and extraordinary told in seductive, sensual, pictorial prose. As always Mawer retells historical events through the eyes and psyches of ordinary people whose lives take ironic, unpredictable turns because of the histories they live through. Excellent narration by Lister.

Brought up memories of my misspent youth!

Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 when everything seemed to be changing, from the hippies in San Francisco to the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. Simon Mawer is very good at this kind of historical fiction. Unfortunately, his book was ill served by the narrator who made the fake accents of non-English speakers sound very strange indeed.

It captures the era perfectly. Particularly the language of the young people. I have to say it may me wince to remember how quick we were to use the label “bourgeois” for anything we disapproved of. His description of their experiences hitchhiking across Europe felt very authentic, as well as the way in which they ended up in Czechoslovakia. It sounds absurd to me now, but flipping a coin to decide which direction you go in was the kind of thing that made a lot of sense at that time.

I managed to get past the difficulties with the narrator, but, in retrospect, I wish I had read it in paper, because I had to keep suppressing my annoyance at his rendition of the German and check accents.

A 5 star story but poorly narrated

This is my third Simon Mawer novel. Enjoyed Trapeze, couldn’t finish Tightrope, and enjoyed this one. It would not qualify as a thriller, but was engrossing. A pair of Oxford college students, a young British diplomat, a Czech student, and supporting cast are drawn together in Prague just before Soviet troops invade. Although the characters are not deep, they are diverse and realistic. This Audible presentation is greatly weakened by the narrator, whose interpretations of what each character sounds like is jarring and improbable. I recommend Prague Spring enthusiastically as a novel, but strongly encourage bypassing the audio version.

I dug it!

Terrific historical novel. If you’re interested in the Cold War era it will have special appeal to you as it did me. Highly recommended.

Novel Without a Cause

For much of its length, I was willing to allow this book to take its plodding course. The writing was the very essence of prosaic, but I figured we would eventually arrive at some point or revelation. Having finished the book, I am now just angry. Simon Mawer chooses a dramatic backdrop of historic events for his novel, only to drain his narrative assiduously of every bit of life. In the process, he manages an unenviable trick: marrying the sort of anti-narrative impulses of modernist fiction with a fundamentally jaded and conservative voice and vision. His sympathies seem to lie with the two unimaginative British men who are our surrogates for much of the novel’s journey, characters utterly devoid of charisma. Perhaps this is a new genre: bureaucratic literature?

The only points of interest in this tedious work are the occasional asides about modern Czechoslovak history. The book contains perhaps half a dozen apostrophes where the author pauses the story (a process that requires only the lightest application of brake pressure) to provide a little insight into some historic event or figure. If only I could have pulled those six pages from the text and discarded the rest.

Finally, a word about sex. I actually admire writing that captures sensuality convincingly, and if Mawer fails on this front, it’s not for want of trying. There isn’t much outright sex in Prague Spring, but there is a great deal of ogling and leering, all from the male perspective. To be fair, not all writers can transcend the bonds—real or imagined—of their gender, and I am not necessarily opposed to an author frankly embracing a “gaze” that is adamantly male or female. The problem here is that the point of view is so stunted and adolescent. Even this might be forgiven were this a work of forthright wish fulfillment in the manner of Ian Fleming. Couched in a novel that purports to be serious fiction—written in 2018 no less!—this sort of skulking and gawking is just vaguely embarrassing.

Pretentious

Made it through three chapters. Very boring and ridiculous. Hated it. What a waste of a selection.