Volume 56, Number 9 · May 28, 2009
'The Invader Wore Slippers'
By John Banville
Prague in Danger: The Years of German Occupation, 1939–45: Memories and History, Terror and Resistance, Theater and Jazz, Film and Poetry, Politics and War
by Peter Demetz
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 274 pp. $25.00; $15.00 (paper)
Peter Demetz, born in Prague in 1922, was 'sixteen, going on seventeen' when on March 15, 1939, German troops, with the enthusiastic support of indigenous fascist groups, invaded the Republic of Czechoslovakia and occupied the city of his birth. As he writes in Prague in Danger, an exciting, one might even say thrilling, account of the six hellish years of Nazi rule that he witnessed, Demetz's interests at the time were 'politics, girls, movies, and jazz (in that order approximately).' Still, he was old enough to realize the enormity of what had happened, although, like most of his fellow Praguers, he did not foresee the full horror of the times that were coming.
Review, 2984 words
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