It has been 20 years since Mariusz Szczygieł first traveled to Prague. The journalist's love for the Czech capital still continues, and the feeling is constantly deepening. This time he went on a trip around his beloved city with Filip Springer, who is the author of the photographs in the publication. A meeting around "A Personal Guide to Prague" will be held this coming Monday at the Studio Theater in Warsaw.
The meeting will take place on Monday, June 29 at 7:00 pm at the Studio Theater. It will be attended not only by the authors themselves, but also by Dominika Ostalowska, Maria Peszek, Tomasz Kot and Jan Peszek, who will read excerpts from the book. The meeting will be moderated by Julianna Jonek-Springer. The entrance fee is PLN 20.
"A Personal Guide to Prague" is Mariusz Szczygiel's 10th anniversary title, published twenty years after the author's first trip to Prague in the spring of 2000, when he was seduced by the city and the language.
In his own words, the book came from nervousness:
Since my first publications about Prague, not a week goes by that I don't get a question about some magical, important, personal place. This, of course, is to be Prague without Charles Bridge and without Hradčany. The excess of these requests, especially the inability to write back to all of them, began to annoy me, so I decided to turn this feeling into something positive. I wrote a guidebook, to which I will now refer everyone.
We can see the places described in the guide thanks to Filip Springer's photographs.
The house as a punch between the eyes. The train station as a fallen fairy tale. A bridge that facilitates death. A shelter from hopelessness. A mountain of indifference. A monument to the gays. A church lost in the courtyard. A grave as a crystal. A tenement that vibrates. A shower as a metaphor... Plus conversations with Czech women and Czechs. Known and unknown.
In the guidebook, I tour only my favorite places in Prague. This is how the book escapes criticism that something is not in it. If it isn't there, it didn't seduce me!
