Writing Prague

In ‘Writing Prague’ Daniël Robberechts tries to create a written portrait of this turbulent city during the end of the 1960s and the decade that followed it. This doesn’t prove easy, though. The object of Robberechts’s writing becomes a project in itself, or, even more so, a conundrum, forcing the reader to ponder metafictional problems. It’s against this backdrop that the Prague Spring breaks out, and the book expands to encompass the genres of chronicle and reportage, an increasingly ingenious web in which all the events described are interconnected in weird and wonderful ways. As it goes on, the web becomes increasingly tangled, and ‘Writing Prague’ turns into a book about writing a book, begging the question: is ‘writing’ Prague even possible anymore?

In the book, Daniël Robberechts explores different methods, genres and tricks in his attempt to describe the city. Which convention will prove a recipe for success, if any? The result is an example of mixed media before its time, and a conglomerate of different types of texts. ‘Writing Prague’ is a courageous challenge to the question of probability in fiction, a project of trial and error, beginnings and abandoned attempts, failure and persistence.