García Márquez’s second stay in Prague came just two years later, as he made a whirlwind trip through Eastern Europe with two friends and ended up on what his biographer Gerald Martin describes as “a nightmare train journey” from Berlin to Prague that lasted some 30 hours. He spent only 24 hours in the city before moving on to Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine and ultimately Russia. Things looked slightly better in December 1968, when he arrived just a few months after the Warsaw Pact invasion, along with Julio Cortázar and Carlos Fuentes, writers from Argentina and Mexico, respectively, to meet with Milan Kundera, who although a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia had been a supporter of the reforms of Prague Spring. The four men and Cortázar’s partner, Lithuanian writer Ugnė Karvelis, met at a sauna on the Vltava River, because, according to Fuentes, it was one of the few places “without ears in the walls.”
Posted on: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 07:52:21 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015