Things I heard Simon Mawer say

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'The Glass Room', 1968, Arthropods, Czech Centre, Czechoslovakia, HG Wells, Hitchhiking, Man Booker Prize, Mendel's Dwarf, Moody Blues, Oxford, Prague Spring, RAF, Simon Mawer, Warsaw Pact, Zoology

This week I heard the author Simon Mawer speak about writing: specifically about his novel Prague Spring, but also his other Czech-based books The Glass Room and Mendel’s Dwarf. Prague Spring is set against the events in Czechoslovakia in the fateful summer of 1968, leading to the invasion by the armies of the Warsaw Pact.

Four things of writerly interest in my mind from that talk:

He was asked what effect having The Glass Room shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2009 had for his career. It benefited hugely, he said, sales went right up, though not as much as if he’d won! He was easy about not actually winning that year, he assured us, though he was just a bit galled when Hilary won it again two years later …

One good thing about being a novelist, he told us, is that you can reinvent your own life. The example he gave was how in the summer of 1968 he had hitchhiked around Europe with a male friend. When in Bavaria they had discussed whether to cross into Czechoslovakia, then enjoying the best days of the Prague Spring, but had decided to go to Greece instead: a decision he had ever since regretted. In Prague Spring two of his main characters set out from England to hitchhike across Europe – a male student (as he had been) James, but this time with an attractive female companion, Ellie; and this time events lead them to cross the Iron Curtain (and thus into the story) rather than go to the Italian sun as planned.

He used more of his own direct experience in James and Ellie’s story. When he and his friend had been hitching they were given a lift by a German lady harpsichordist who interrogated him where he was studying, and when he gave the name of his Oxford college she asked if he knew a particular law professor there, whose friend she was. In Prague Spring he retells this story, with James and Ellie meeting a lady cellist who, likewise, is a friend of a don at his Oxford college.

Perhaps less commonly for novelists, Simon Mawer has a scientific background: his degree was in zoology and for many years he worked as a biology teacher. This shows in a remarkable simile in one of the extracts he read to us on Tuesday: a Russian tank lost in the streets of Prague is likened first to a Martian in HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds but then, more uniquely, to a reptile or arthropod, the muzzle of its gun being a proboscis, which “shifts back and forth, as though sniffing the air, perhaps even trying to work out where the humans have gone.” Not an image that would have occurred to those of us with English literature or history backgrounds, perhaps.

In thrillers, he reminded us (and in whodunits, come to think of it), everything that happens must be related to the plot. But life, of course, isn’t like that. Lots of things happen that don’t link up with anything else. But in a novel you can explore these, and tell them for their own sake. One bizarre episode that features in Prague Spring but is not essential to the plot is the appearance of the Moody Blues. They actually were in Prague at this time, and the day before the Russian invasion they were filmed performing on the city’s famous Charles Bridge. Their appearance in the novel adds colour and interest and tells a true story, and you’re glad it’s there, but in a thriller you’d be wondering what its significance was.

(You can see this surreal performance on YouTube – go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4_xCA4IO7U , to see these Brummies miming Nights in White Satin to adoring fans on an otherwise empty Charles Bridge for a Franco-Belgian TV programme. It’s strange to think that 24 hours later that area was busy with invading soldiers.)

Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction Dept: In his interview Simon Mawer asked us to reflect on the fact that once the invasion happened, the British Embassy somehow arranged for the Moody Blues to be flown out of the country, apparently in an RAF transport plane. How was it, he asked, that in all the chaos and busyness of those events, someone managed to persuade the new Warsaw Pact controllers of the country to allow an RAF plane into Czechoslovak air space to evacuate a group of British pop singers? Would you dare put such an unlikely happening in a novel?

The interview was organised by the Czech Centre at the Czech Embassy in London. Simon was interviewed by Prague-based journalist David Vaughan, followed by a lively Q&A session with the audience.  Thanks, Czech Centre!

Prague Spring was featured on this blog at https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2018/12/10/prague-spring/ and The Glass Room at https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/the-glass-room-revisited/ . You can listen to all of Simon Mawer’s talk at https://soundcloud.com/czech-centre-london/simon-mawer-prague-spring .

‘Prague Spring’

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1968, Alexander Dubcek, Bielefeld, Czechoslovakia, Moody Blues, Prague Spring, Simon Mawer, Warsaw Pact

Topicality, or anniversaries, can give writers real opportunities.

The events of August 1968 are the setting for Prague Spring, the new novel by Simon Mawer. He has written before about Czechoslovakia, as readers of The Glass Room will know, that telling and compelling history of a villa that is remarkably like the Villa Tugendhat in Brno. (See https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/the-glass-room-revisited/.) He shows the same confidence and attention to detail here.

The novel focuses on two diverse couples whose lives become intertwined in Prague as the political tension mounts, as Warsaw Pact troops are massing on the borders. Two students decide to hitch-hike across Europe: wealthy, Home Counties Ellie (revelling in the role of revolutionary socialist – this is 1968, remember!) and poorer, Sheffield-born James. Their relationship shifts as they find their way across Europe, depending on the opportunities or the hazards that face them. Dubček and “socialism with a human face” have been much in the news, and the toss of a Deutschmark decides that they will go to Prague to see it rather than head south to Italy for the sun.

Meanwhile, at the British Embassy in Prague, Sam Wareham (a fluent Czech- and Russian-speaking First Secretary) has met beautiful Lenka Konečková. She is the daughter of a victim of the show trials in the 1950s, and is someone anxious to enjoy the new freedoms the Prague Spring has brought. With her Sam explores this new optimistic world in ways that might well have been closed to him if he was confined to his usual round of Embassy socials and official trade union visits.

The mixture of this exciting new freedom, and the threats gathering at the frontier, generates a tension that pervades the love lives of these characters and the people they meet and the places they go. We visit a chaotic pop concert given by a ramshackle American pot-smoking pop group the Ides of March, and at classical concerts we are transported by the music of Dvořák and Brahms. We attend an exuberant political meeting; just like the hitchhiking couple, we meet a wide range of folk on the road, we come across an influential Party member, and we see shadowy people in action at the Embassy. Musicians feature quite prominently – as well the Ides of March we meet a famed German cellist, a more famous Russian conductor and his young violinist lover. There is even a cameo appearance by the Moody Blues (as a way of evoking the late 1960s in the minds of those of us who were there, bringing in Nights in White Satin is a masterstroke). Dubček is seen briefly. We visit Café Slavia and are greeted by a shortish man in a leather jacket who we are told later is a playwright … There is a lot of sex (as, I recall, there was in The Glass Room).

Reader, I don’t think I’m really spoiling it if I tell you that the paths of these two couples cross and the Russians do invade. The sense of massive confusion throughout the city when that happens is well described. The Prague Spring is being brutally brought to an end and our protagonists find themselves in the midst of the horror and the chaos.

Simon Mawer has included in the text four short explanatory notes to give some background: on the suspicious death shortly after the Communist coup d’état in 1948 of the Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk; on the Communists’ murder in 1949 of the democrat Milada Horáková; on the Bavarian-Czechoslovak border; and on ‘Ghosts’ – Kafka, Hašek, the Castle itself, and the letter from five members of the Czechoslovak Presidium to Brezhnev asking him to intervene to save the country from counter-revolution.

In August 1968 I was staying with a German family in Bielefeld. I recall their fear that the Russians wouldn’t stop at the Czechoslovak border.   Many readers will have their own memories of what it was actually like to be in Czechoslovakia as they unfolded: for those of us who don’t, Prague Spring is a novel that tries to capture that historic moment.

Published by Little, Brown ISBN 978-1-4087-1114-9

(This piece first appeared in the October/November 2018 issue of the British Czech & Slovak Review, the newsletter of the British Czech & Slovak Association – see http://www.bcsa.co.uk. To hear Simon Mawer talking about this book in a radio interview go to https://www.radio.cz/en/section/books/simon-mawers-prague-spring-a-complex-love-story-amid-the-drama-of-1968.)

21 August 1968

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1968, Bielefeld, Brezhnev, Czechoslovakia, Dubček, Invasion, Nigel Peace, Prague Spring, Radio Prague, Simon Mawer, Warsaw Pact

Historic events are often tragic but can form the setting for so many stories.

On 21 August 1968 the armies of the Warsaw Pact invaded their partner in the socialist bloc, Czechoslovakia. Thus ended the hopes of the Prague Spring, and then came ‘normalisation’ (Orwell would have been proud of that neologism), which put the Czechs and Slovaks back in their place behind the Iron Curtain for the two decades until 1989.

Two novels published this month focus on these terrible events. There will be several others!

Prague Spring is by Simon Mawer (author of the remarkable novel The Glass Room, reviewed on this blog at https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/the-glass-room-revisited/). Two English students, Ellie and James, are hitch-hiking in Europe and are in Czechoslovakia at the key time, while Sam Wareham, working at the British Embassy in Prague, much in the company of Czech student Lenka Konecková, is discovering the world of Czechoslovak youth. But the Russian tanks are assembling … (Published by Little, Brown; ISBN 9781408711156)

Broken Sea: A story of love and intolerance is by Nigel Peace. It’s a love story set against the background of 1968. 18-year-old Roy has met Czech student in Wales and falls in love, but she feels she must return home. Their love develops, but can it last? Lives are so changed by the events of 1968, and are too many things kept secret? (Published by Local Legend; ISBN 9781910027233)

At this date fifty years ago I was staying with a German family in Bielefeld in West Germany. I recall vividly their alarm at the news of the invasion: would the Russians stop at the Czechoslovak border or carry on into West Germany? Fortunately for my hosts they stopped.

If you’re interested in the politics of it all, there’s a 12-minute piece on Radio Prague about the negotiations between Dubček and Brezhnev in the period leading up to 21 August – go to https://www.radio.cz/en/section/czech-history/kieran-williams-a-week-before-the-invasion-dubcek-still-believed-he-had-time.

 

‘The Glass Room’ (re)visited

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'The Glass Room', Architecture, Brno, Czechoslovakia, Mies van der Rohe, Simon Mawer, The Velvet Divorce, Václav Klaus, Villa Tugendhat, Vladimír Mečiar

My wife and I were both so taken with The Glass Room by Simon Mawer that on our visit to the Czech Republic this month we made a point of visiting the Villa Tugendhat, the location (and indeed the centrepiece) of that fine novel. (See https://ninevoices.wordpress.com//?s=Glass+Room)

The Villa Tugendhat was a ground-breaking design in its time, the work of Mies van der Rohe in 1929–1930, and it’s a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site. It’s in Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic. Mies van der Rohe was given an unlimited budget! Of which he took full advantage …

The description of the Villa Landauer – and of its creation – in the novel seem to be exactly those of the Villa Tugendhat. We marvelled at the onyx wall, the wall of glass and its mechanism for being moved up and down, and the wonderful views through it of Brno’s Castle – all of which feature prominently in the novel. Mies van der Rohe forbade the house’s first occupants from putting anything on the walls, as does the novel’s architect, Rainer von Abt, as ornament was a crime: our guide gleefully showed us the room where the Tugendhats hid their pictures when Mies van der Rohe came to visit.

Simon Mawer has thus written his novel about the real house: it’s even set on the Villa’s actual street, Černopolní. The stories of the occupants are rather more fictionalised, though not always drastically so. So, writers, this is what you can do with location!

Our guide told us that in real life the house has played its own part in the recent history of Central Europe. She told us that it was under a tree in the garden that in 1992 the Czech Premier Václav Klaus and the Slovak Premier Vladimír Mečiar met to discuss their opposing views on the way forward for newly free Czechoslovakia, and ended by deciding to split the country into two! That tree, apparently, died not long after …

My wife and I were thrilled by our visit to the Villa. The novel had inspired us to go, and our visit made the novel even more memorable for us. You can visit the Villa but you are advised to book at least two months in advance (see http://www.tugendhat.eu/en/). Guided tours in English are available, and well worth it. The young lady who took us round was clearly in love with the building herself!

Thanks, Simon.