The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe

A shimmering literary examination of the ghost of communism, a haunting presence of Europe's past

Oskar has just killed himself. After waiting a quarter century, he returned to Prague only to find it was no longer his home. With his memorial service, Yale historian and prize-winning author Marci Shore leads us gently into the post-totalitarian world. We meet a professor of literature who as a child played chess with the extortionist who had come to deliver him to the Gestapo and an elderly...