Prague Spring cover art

Prague Spring

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Prague Spring

By: Simon Mawer
Narrated by: Dugald Bruce Lockhart
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About this listen

In the summer of 1968, the year of Prague Spring with a Cold War winter, Oxford students James Borthwick and Eleanor Pike set out to hitchhike across Europe, complicating a budding friendship that could be something more. Having reached southern Germany, they decide on a whim to visit Czechoslovakia, where Alexander Dubcek's 'socialism with a human face' is smiling on the world.

Meanwhile, Sam Wareham, First Secretary at the British embassy in Prague, observes developments in the country with a diplomat's cynicism and a young man's passion. In the company of Czech student Lenka Konecková, he finds a way into the world of Czechoslovak youth, with all its hopes and new ideas; now, nothing seems off-limits behind the Iron Curtain. But the great wheels of politics are grinding in the background; Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev is making demands of Dubcek, and the Red Army is massing on the borders.

©2018 Simon Mawer (P)2018 W. F. Howes Ltd Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Fiction Soviet Union Red Army

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The whole experience was marred by the awful narration. I usually love Simon Mawer's novels, but this one would have been better read from a book than listened to on Audible.

Terrible narration

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My compliments to the author on his impressive depth of historical, geographical and cultural knowledge, and research displayed in this book. However, all this detail, sadly for me gets in the way of good storytelling. it is my love of Prague and Czechia that maintained my interest in this book, not the actual story.
As for the narrator, compliments on the vast majority of pronunciations, but the Czech accent is a beautiful sound, it is very different to the Russian accent which seems to have been a generic choice for all Slavs in the story.

Sadly, storytelling comes second

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Two young hitchhikers. A diplomat and his Czech lover. The two stories come together in Prague. Gripping, exciting, sad and a great listen.

Great storytelling

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An enjoyable story and well read. But why don't the readers or their producers make sure that foreign words are at least passably pronounced? At least a chat with a Czech and a Russian to get things roughly straight.

Enjoyable and well researched

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