Prague
Subtitle: A Novel
Publisher: Random House
Published: June 18, 2002
Language: eng
Number of pages: 384
ISBN-13: 9780375507878
First sentence: THE DECEPTIVELY SIMPLY RULES OF THE GAME SINCERITY, AS played late one Friday afternoon in May 1990 on the terrace of the Cafe Gerbeaud in Budapest, Hungary: 1. Players (in this case, five) arrange themselves around a small cafe table and impatiently await their order, haphazardly recorded by a sulky and distracted waitress with amusing boots: dollhouse cups of espresso, dense blocks of cake glazed with Art Nouveau swirls of translucent caramel, skimpy sandwiches dusted red-orange with the national spice, glass thimbles of sweet or bitter or smoky liqueurs, tumblers of bubbling water ostensibly hunted and captured from virgin springs high in the Carpathian Mountains.