The “absurd” grew out of the “surreal.” So it was in twentieth-century European culture, and so it is with Sayer's commentary on one of the key centers—he views it as the very most important—of the movements that generated both those epithets. These “postcards” are ostensibly a sequel to his Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History (2013). Whereas the latter (despite its title) focused more on the interwar years, Postcards (despite its title) privileges the era of communism. But little in either book is really sequential, or consequential. Sayer chronicles a world of the absurd but also contributes to it. Essentially he provides an episodic celebration of the Czech contribution to (post)modern civilization, with some brilliant aperçus. It is good to know that one architect from Prague designed the highly authentic Japanese village at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, which was deliberately and repeatedly destroyed in US military...
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