Others' ParadiseWriting from Bohemia Series

Fiction. Translated from the German by Stephanie Howard and Amy R. Nestor. Towards the end of his life Leppin wrote: "Prague remains my deepest experience. Its conflict, its mystery, its rat-catcher's beauty have ever provided my poetic efforts with new inspiration and meaning." OTHERS' PARADISE represents one of the most intense expressions of this experience. Beginning with the highly imagistic "The Doors of Life," the eight stories contained in this volume detail the contours of the lives and visions of a collection of Prague inhabitants, from a prostitute bound to the decay of the old Jewish Quarter, to a man caught in the memory of a lost love and a shoemaker whose knowledge of the owrkd has been constricted to the view from the window of his cellar workroom. Binding their personal histories, woven into their most intimate details, is Prague itself, the city whose nature, mythical and yet all-too-real, gives shape and force to their desires while simultaneously determining their frustrations.