Visible World

by Mark Slouka

Book Overview

An immensely moving, powerfully romantic novel about the vagaries of love and the legacy of war, The Visible World is narrated by the American-born son of Czech immigrants. His New York childhood, lived in a boisterous community of the displaced, is suffused with stories: fragments of European history, Czech fairy tales, and family secrets gleaned from overheard conversations. Central in his young imagination is the heroic account of the seven...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0547053673
• ISBN13: 9780547053677
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.8" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

possessed by memoir, fiction and the legacy of central europe

For those of you who, like me, are interested both in memoir and the history of Central Europe, Mark Slouka's The Visible World is provocative reading. The son of Czechs who settled in New York City after the Communist putsch of 1948, Slouka is a writer who is as possessed by his parents' past as some of the most history-obssessed offspring of Holocaust survivors like myself. His book is poised somewhere between memoir and autobiographical fiction. Apart from his parents, Slouka is fascinated by the heroes of the Czech resistance during world war. Although the movie Casablanca has Humphrey Bogart sending Ingrid Bergman off on a plane with a leader of the Czech resistance, many people have forgotten that Czechs were once regarded as a symbol of resistance against the Nazis. Slouka takes us on his personal quest into that territory.

exquisite

I thought this book might give me some interesting background on Prague, but it far surpassed my expectations. It is a beautifully constructed triptych that interweaves fiction, memoir, and historical fact. The writing is beautiful, the characters memorable, the descriptions evocative.

A fine novel from one of America's great contemporary writers

I was totally intrigued by Slouka's previous novel, "God's Fool," and awaited with great anticipation the advent of this his latest novel. I was not disappointed. The work centers around the musing of a maturing American male who seeks to reconcile his parents' mysterious past during the brutal Nazis occupation of Czechoslovokia. The answers he finds are far less evident than the book's title would suggest. This is one of the few books I could truly enjoy reading twice!

A fascinating story, beautifully written

This is a captivating tale of desperation built upon carefully constructed, mesmerizing prose. The Heydrich assassination in 1942 Prague provides the background for the story of a son's investigation of his mother's lost happiness. There is a Strindberg-like deterministic quality to all of the characters as they play out their roles, yet the author still manages to surprise. The writing is extremely evocative yet not so dense as to impede the action. This is a really fine piece of work.

Fabulous read!

Wow. I heard this book discussed on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered, and decided it sounded worth the price. I was not disappointed. As a fan of Milan Kundera, I resist reading books compared to his, but this time it is spot-on. Slouka's protagonist weaves an imagined love story between his mother and a WWII resistance fighter in with the story of his own youth spent with Czech expatriates and his trips to Prague searching for answers to the mystery of his mother's life. The result is a wonderful combination of magical realism and stunning, clear prose that had me hanging on every word. I think Mark Slouka is a marvelous writer, and I hope many more find this lovely novel. Here's the NPR link- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10161668