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A Desert in Bohemia

by Jill Paton Walsh; Jill Paton Walsh

It is 1945 and, in the beleaguered fictional Eastern European country of Comenia, Eliska and Jiri and a foundling baby take refuge in an abandoned castle where, along with the lord of the manor, they manage to make a life for themselves. In the midst of terror and chaos, the respected children's-book writer Jill Paton Walsh creates a fairy tale with political overtones.

Available editions of A Desert in Bohemia

	9780783894300, Hardcover, Thorndike Pr, 2001 $1.00 (New) Other copies of 9780783894300

	9780385601214, Book, Doubleday, 2000 £3.00 () Other copies of 9780385601214

	9780452282681, Paperback, Penguin Group USA, 2001 $1.00 (Used, Very Good) Other copies of 9780452282681

	9780312262631, Hardcover, St Martins Pr, 2000 $1.00 (Used, Very Good) Other copies of 9780312262631

Publisher Notes

It is 1945. Somewhere in Central Europe, in the aftermath of violence and confusion, a terrified and bloodstained young woman, Eliska, emerges from the forest to take refuge in an apparently abandoned castle. Soon she is joined by others-the idealistic Jiri, the sinister Slavomir and his partisans, and Count Michael Blansky, who is the castle's ancestral owner.
But the war has changed things forever. In a storm of ideological change, the existing order and the aristocratic heritage of ten generations are brushed aside by the arrival of Communism, and Count Michael must join the flood of refugees if he is to survive. He leaves behind a legacy that will entangle those involved for the next forty years in more ways than they can possibly imagine.
As divided post-war Europe unravels around them, communities are destroyed, families uprooted, and the ties of trust, friendship, and duty that bind them together are broken down. Told through the eyes of nine characters who live through the forty years between the end of the war and the fall of Communism, A Desert in Bohemia is a complex and enthralling testament to the power-and powerlessness-of the individual in challenging times. By the time the Berlin Wall comes down, their lives will have been battered, broken, and made whole once more.

Media Reviews

"A DESERT IN BOHEMIA sets out to tell credible stories...about victims of war and oppression in an invented Czech-speaking Comenia, an imaginable country embellished with a fair amount of romantic color....The conventions of romance employed in presenting characters and how they speak and relate work against all its best intentions; the mixture of grim fact and fairy tale fails to blend."

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