GatesyRead

  When I first visited Prague in November 1995, the ghostly presence of the Cold War seemed to linger in the wintry setting, the quiet streets after dark, and the strange shuffling, secretive habits of the owner of the apartment I was renting. And yet it was also very much apart from a decade earlier, when Philip Roth published The Prague Orgy (1985) and the Cold War was in the middle of a charged resurgence. I recently re-read this book and felt not nostalgia but horror. Imagine an era of secret police, disappearances, authoritarian power and personal fear. Yes, it hasn’t entirely gone away from the world at large (Russia, China, Iran) – even if Wenceslas Square is now a place of tourism and high street shopping. In this novella, Roth continues with the character of Nathan Zuckerman, a successful America novelist and protagonist of three earlier works of fiction ( The Ghost Writer [1979], Zuckerman Unbound [1981], The Anatomy Lesson [1984]). The setting is 1976. Zuckerman agrees t