In this strange and lovely hymn to Prague, Michal Ajvaz repopulates the city of Kafka with ghosts, eccentrics, talking animals, and impossible statues, all lurking on the peripheries of a town so familiar to tourists. *The Other City* is a guidebook to this invisible, "other Prague," overlapping the workaday world: a place where libraries can turn into jungles, secret passages yawn beneath our feet, and waves lap at our bedspreads. Heir to the tradition and obsessions of Jorge Luis Borges, as well as the long and distinguished line of Czech fantasists, Ajvaz's *Other City*—his first novel to be translated into English—is the emblem of all the worlds we are blind to, being caught in our own ways of seeing.
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Strange, atmospheric, lyrical writing and nods to bibliophiles and storytelling is a combination I LOVE in books. The Other City is drowning in all of these and is a trippy ride that may not be for the average reader, but if you like your stories a bit bizarre, meandering, yet also manages a pretty good story, then you probably will enjoy this one. Straight up I'm going to tell you, this is likely one of the most peculiar and off the wall stories I have ever read. If that isn't your thing, steer clear. I wasn't even quite sure what I was reading at times. But if you persevere and you do like stories that are surrealist in nature, it is worth wandering through this imagination-fueled Prague. It makes you want to look in all the nooks and crannies of your own backyard to see if there might be a hint of something ‘beyond' the ordinary world you know. Whether it is flying fish, or worlds within statues or books in unknown languages, that is only the tip of the iceberg in this jam-packed journey through the “other Prague”. The journey is more one of wandering and allowing serendipity to lead you toward what you seek. There are insights I thought about long after I finished it and felt the need to re-read it almost immediately to see what I missed the first time. I highly enjoyed it and think we could use more books that stretch our imagination in the way this book does. I can see this being a re-read on a snowy evening when you want to be carried off into cobbled streets of the eccentric and unconventional and the mysterious.
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