By couch­ing a mem­oir of 20th cen­tu­ry life in Prague with­in text­book-like descrip­tions of the city’s his­to­ry and archi­tec­ture, and then, star­tling­ly, includ­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion of the duplic­i­ty, cru­el­ty, and anti- Semi­tism of the Slan­sky tri­als, the read­er encoun­ters three dis­tinct nar­ra­tives. Author Ivan Mar­golius, now an award-win­ning archi­tect and his­tor­i­cal crit­ic, tells of a child­hood in Prague, an absent but affec­tion­ate father and a strong moth­er, full of dreams and longing. 

Mar­golius evokes the cat­a­clysmic years of Com­mu­nist rule, focus­ing heav­i­ly on the arrest, impris­on­ment, tri­al and death of his father, Rudolf, when the boy was 14. This unique third por­tion pro­vides extracts of the sur­re­al pere Mar­golius. A func­tion­ing bureau­crat, caught in the Com­mu­nists’ twist­ed purges of the late 40s and ear­ly 50s, the cir­cum­stances of Rudolf’s death were not explained to Ivan then and for years after, in order to pro­tect him from ostracism. While the historical/​personal por­tions could be con­sid­ered unre­mark­able, this last is a valu­able reminder of the aber­ra­tions pos­si­ble in a civ­i­lized world. Appen­dices, notes, index, photos.