LIFE AFTER SPRING
Richard Swartz, born in Stockholm in 1945, was Eastern Europe correspondent for Svenska Dagbladet, lives alternately in Stockholm, Vienna and Sovinjak (Istria) and writes for various international newspapers. Books include Room Service. Geschichten aus Europas Nahe Osten (1997), Blut, Boden & Geld (2017) and Zsolnay Wiener Flohmarktleben (2015) and Austern in Prag (2019)
in dialogue with
Barbara Coudenhove-Kalergi, born in Prague in 1932, she was expelled from Prague as a German in 1945 and found a new home in Austria. After the fall of the communist dictatorships, she returned to her native country and worked as an ORF correspondent in Prague from 1991 to 1995. Today she writes as a freelance journalist, mainly for Czech and Austrian newspapers, and is the editor of several books with texts on the history and present of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Moderation Günter Kaindlstorfer, journalist and writer
A young man in Prague in the 1970s, after the suppression of the Prague Spring: Richard Swartz tells of closeness, hardship and lies in a dictatorship.
With a diploma from an elite school in Stockholm in his hand, Richard Swartz searches for a way to escape his father's will in Eastern Europe in the early 1970s. He wanted to be a Praguer among Praguers, to share everyday life with them. Scarcity rules - from toilet paper to morals. Unlike many of his generation, he does not believe that socialism can be reformed. He meets hosts who lay out oyster spoons, even though there have been no oysters for decades in Prague, a city that his girlfriend Jarka claims only dogs can live well and decently in. Richard Swartz tells of human closeness and great affection, but also of hardship and lies in a dictatorship.
Richard Swartz: AUSTERN in PRAGUE. Life after spring
Translated from the Swedish by Andrea Fredriksson-Zederbauer
2019, Zsolnay, ISBN 978-3-552-05932-0
256 pages; € 23,70
in co-operation with Zsolnay Verlag