Prague

Prague is the city to which the narrator comes to research collectors, and where, in 1967, he first meets Utz, who has lived there since after World War II and who dies there in 1974. The narrator senses hope in Czechoslovakia when he meets Utz there. The country experiences a brief period of political liberalization at that time, especially from the beginning of 1968. The period is called "Prague Spring" after it comes to an abrupt end on August twentieth, when the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries invade Czechoslovakia, rendering assistance against "counter-revolutionary" elements, and tanks roll into Prague. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, after the writing of this book. Czechoslovakia split peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, both parliamentary democracies, in early 1993.

The Utz Collection of Porcelain

Meissen is the first European porcelain, invented in 1708 by Johann Friedrich Bottger on behalf of the Elector of Saxony...