In The Winter's Tale, a play of 1610, William Shakespeare gave a coastline to Bohemia, a landlocked country. Three hundred and twenty-eight years later, his compatriot Neville Chamberlain would call a brewing war in Czechoslovakia, as the country was called, "a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing." As Canadian scholar Sayer writes, knowingly, Bohemia eventually got its coastline, one "guarded by minefields, barbed-wire fences, and tall watchtowers with machine guns," while the West took little notice. The general ignorance of all things Czech would cost Europe dearly, for conflagrations from the Thirty Years War to World War II (and even sparks that might have ignited World War III) have begun in the tiny country known by many names---Czechoslovakia, Bohemia, Moravia. Canadian scholar Sayer writes of the Czechs' struggle over centuries to define themselves as a people and nation, and he does so in a vivid, detailed narrative that will enlighten readers who are unfamiliar with the critically important center of Eastern Europe. --Gregory McNamee


From Library Journal
Historically, the Czech people have long been oppressed and have only recently gained true independence. Therefore, it is difficult to uncover the origins and long history of the Czech people and Bohemia. Here Sayer (sociology, Univ. of Alberta in Edmonton) takes a sociologist's approach to history by writing about the emergence of the Czech nationality. He meticulously tracks and details the growth of Czech nationalism through literature, theater, art, architecture, language, and music to provide a thorough story of how the Czechs shed the oppression of the German and Austrian reigns over their land to become a distinct people. While a bit cumbersome to read, Sayer's work is groundbreaking in its scope and direction. Recommended for academic libraries and specialized European collections.AJill Jaracz, ChicagoCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
The title of this timely and delightful survey is taken from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale; it serves as a metaphor for the West's frequent ignorance and often tragic indifference to this landlocked nation in the center of Europe. Sayer, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta, presents both a political and a cultural history of the Czech people and eloquently hammers home his central thesis: that, for the past millennium, the Czechs and their homeland have been at the crossroads, not the periphery, of many of the key events and movements of European history. From the Reformation to the nineteenth-century nationalist movements to the inferno of the two world wars, the Czech people have been prominent players, both as initiators and as victims. With the Czech Republic about to join NATO and the West, this superbly written book is a useful tool for historians, political scientists, and the well-informed general reader. Jay Freeman


From Kirkus Reviews
An unconventional and original look at Czech history, examining the ``artifacts of national culture,'' both large and small. Sayer, a Canadian sociologist (University of Alberta, Edmonton) married to a native Czech, aims to set the record straight. His intention is to free Bohemia from the conventional and uninformed image of it as a pastoralized, romanticized, and Orientalized place far from the realms of Europe proper. His key point is that the displacement of Bohemia from its proper context ``equally dislocates and deranges what we like to think of as our history.'' The result is a daring and exciting book, energetically and beautifully written, and complexly conceived. Sayer pursues two tasks simultaneously and carries them off gracefully. First, he presents a history of Bohemia and Moravia during the 19th and 20th centuries. Rather than viewing this history vis--vis events in Western Europe, he focuses on concepts and manifestations of national identity and manipulations of these phenomena. Thus he lays bare the fascinating links between different periods. In chapters with telling titles such as ``Rebirth,'' ``Mirrors of Identity,'' and ``Future Perfect,'' he weaves together his copiously documented tale of how leaders from every period drew on Bohemia's national heritage to further their aims. While one strand of Sayer's narrative constructs his argument about the centrality of the sense of a national community and past and its appropriation by the powers-that-be, the other meticulously documents the material and cultural expressions of these trends. Sayer centers much of his discussion on artistic trends, especially Czech modern art, but he includes in his panoramic view everything from postage stamps to monuments and street names. Here national culture and memory are dissected in their entirety, from the grand gestures of national heroes and artists to the minutiae of everyday life. A rare ``crossover'' book that will appeal to both scholars and general readers interested in Central Europe, modernism, and debates about national identity. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare gave the landlocked country of Bohemia a coastline - a famous and, to Czechs, typical example of foreigners' ignorance of the Czech homeland. Although the lands that were once the Kingdom of Bohemia lie at the heart of Europe, Czechs are usually encountered only in the margins of other people's stories. In The Coasts of Bohemia, Derek Sayer reverses this perspective. Sayer shows that Bohemia has long been a theater of European conflict. It has been a cradle of Protestantism and a bulwark of the Counter-Reformation; an Austrian imperial province and a proudly Slavic national state; the most easterly democracy in Europe and a westerly outlier of the Soviet bloc. The complexities of its location have given rise to profound (and often profoundly comic) reflections on the modern condition. Franz Kafka, Jaroslav Hasek, Karel Capek and Milan Kundera are all products of its spirit of place. Sayer describes how Bohemia's ambiguities and contradictions are those of Europe itself, and he considers the ironies of viewing Europe, the West, and modernity from the vantage point of a country that has been too often ignored.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Historically, the Czech people have long been oppressed and have only recently gained true independence. Therefore, it is difficult to uncover the origins and long history of the Czech people and Bohemia. Here Sayer (sociology, Univ. of Alberta in Edmonton) takes a sociologist's approach to history by writing about the emergence of the Czech nationality. He meticulously tracks and details the growth of Czech nationalism through literature, theater, art, architecture, language, and music to provide a thorough story of how the Czechs shed the oppression of the German and Austrian reigns over their land to become a distinct people. While a bit cumbersome to read, Sayer's work is groundbreaking in its scope and direction. Jill Jaracz, Chicago

Steven Beller - The Times Literary Supplement

A masterful essay on the ironies and tragedies of both the cultural history of the Czechs and Czech culture's history of its own past.

New York Review of Books

A rich and intricate story.... Excellent... the most stimulating introduction to [its] subject available in English, or ... any other language.

Kirkus Reviews

An unconventional and original look at Czech history, examining the "artifacts of national culture," both large and small. Sayer, a Canadian sociologist (University of Alberta, Edmonton) married to a native Czech, aims to set the record straight. His intention is to free Bohemia from the conventional and uninformed image of it as a pastoralized, romanticized, and Orientalized place far from the realms of Europe proper. His key point is that the displacement of Bohemia from its proper context "equally dislocates and deranges what we like to think of as our history." The result is a daring and exciting book, energetically and beautifully written, and complexly conceived. Sayer pursues two tasks simultaneously and carries them off gracefully. First, he presents a history of Bohemia and Moravia during the 19th and 20th centuries. Rather than viewing this history vis-￯﾿ﾽ-vis events in Western Europe, he focuses on concepts and manifestations of national identity and manipulations of these phenomena. Thus he lays bare the fascinating links between different periods. In chapters with telling titles such as "Rebirth," "Mirrors of Identity," and "Future Perfect," he weaves together his copiously documented tale of how leaders from every period drew on Bohemia's national heritage to further their aims. While one strand of Sayer's narrative constructs his argument about the centrality of the sense of a national community and past and its appropriation by the powers-that-be, the other meticulously documents the material and cultural expressions of these trends. Sayer centers much of his discussion on artistic trends, especially Czech modern art, but he includes in his panoramic view everything frompostage stamps to monuments and street names. Here national culture and memory are dissected in their entirety, from the grand gestures of national heroes and artists to the minutiae of everyday life. A rare "crossover" book that will appeal to both scholars and general readers interested in Central Europe, modernism, and debates about national identity.