Czech’em Out Book Club meets on the third Monday of each month with NCSML volunteer Steve Pederson in the Skala Bartizal Library following the reading of each months selected book. You can purchase this month’s book from our museum store.
About this months book: Goulash
Eager to escape stifling small-town Indiana, Elliott moves to Prague, where he gets a job teaching English. It’s 1998, and the Czech Republic is moving with increasing rapidity out of the shadow of communism and into the wilds of twenty-first-century capitalism. Elliott meets his students in a variety of pubs and conducts his lessons over pints of local Radegast beer. He gets his shoes stolen by an experimental artist who engages Elliott in a number of eccentric schemes. And he meets Amanda, an English teacher from the UK, with whom he falls in love.
Together, they try to make a place for themselves as strangers in this strange land. They explore the dark history and surprising wonders of their adopted city, touring the twisting ancient streets and encountering expats, movie stars, tobacco executives, a former Soviet informant, and the president of Poland. But the forces that are reshaping the city are also at work on them, and eventually it becomes evident that their idyll must end–that change is the only reality one can’t outrun.
About the Author:
Brian Kimberling grew up in southern Indiana before moving to the Czech Republic, Mexico and Turkey where he worked for several years. He eventually settled in England where he still resides. In 2010 he graduated from Bath Spa University with his Masters in creative writing. He has since written two works in 2013, Snapper and Nationwide. In 2019 he published Goulash.