A Romantic Education [Paperback]

Patricia Hampl (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999

A now classic memoir, described by Doris Grumbach as "unusually elegant and meditative," once more available with an updated afterword by the author.

Golden Prague seemed mostly gray when Patricia Hampl first went there in quest of her Czech heritage. In that bleak time, no one could have predicted the political upheaval awaiting Communist Europe and the city of Kafka and Rilke. Hampl's subsequent memoir, a brilliant evocation of Czech life under socialism, attained the stature of living history, and added to our understanding not only of Central Europe but also of what it means to be engaged in the struggle of a people to define and affirm themselves. Reissued now, during the tenth anniversary of that astonishing upheaval known as the Velvet Revolution, A Romantic Education includes an extensive updated afterword based on Hampl's annual return trips to Prague and the Czech countryside. Here is an excellent introduction to what was once the unknown "other Europe" behind the Iron Curtain and is now the continent's hottest new travel destination. Once again, as she did in a darker time, Hampl sees the texture beneath the surface of things and intuits the changing life of one of Europe's most bewitching cities. A Romantic Education is an exquisite journey into history and into the conundrum of personal memory

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hampl adds a new afterword to this 1981 memoir/travelogue about her ancestral home, Prague, based on her 1991 return visit.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Patricia Hampl, Regents' Professor at the University of Minnesota, lives in St. Paul.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 10 Anv edition (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393319059
• ISBN-13: 978-0393319057
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #562,409 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elegant and lyrical, June 28, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Romantic Education (Paperback)

I first read Patricia Hampl's I Could Tell You Stories when I took a 1st person essay writing class, and all of us in the class became instant fans. Her book provoked endless discussions about the reliability (or Unreliability) of memory and the role it plays in memoir writing. Hampl's A Romantic Education allows us to continue following her down her chosen path as she returns to Prague in search of her heritage during the gray pall of socialism. This edition of A Romantic Education is a reissue following the Velvet Revolution and is full of richly nuanced detail that we have come to expect from Hampl. It's an elegant piece of writing that allows us to taste and dabble in the trickling stream of history running beneath the surface of the everlasting riddle of personal memory.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tale of two cities, February 4, 2006

By 

Jay Dickson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Romantic Education (Paperback)

Elegant, meditative, and special, Patrica Hampl's memoir of growing up in St. Paul and visiting her ancestral home of Prague deservedly won her a Macarthur genius grant, and remains a classic of its genre. When it was published in the early 80s, the gorgeous Bohemian captial of Prague was sheltered from the American line of vision by the Iron Curtain, and much less familiar to American readers than it is today; Hampl's book details her trip in the 70s to that loveliest of cities to visit her family's origins and learn something about her place in the world. But the book is also a beautiful meditation on another exceptionally romantic, and often still neglected, city, Hampl's hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota. Stunningly situated on the high bluffs overlooking a chasmic portion of the Mississippi, the home of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Empire Builder James J. Hill, St. Paul has declined in cultural significance over the decades, overshadowed by its younger and more prosperous twin city across the river. But Hampl lovingly evokes what it was like to live in this atmospheric city of decaying Victorian mansions overlooking the downtown from the heights of Summit Avenue, both as a grandchild of Czech immigrants working as servants for the enmansed and as a young woman striking out as a student and a writer. It's an unusual, romantically-staurated memoir.

5.0 out of 5 stars Patricia Hampl -- a wonderful writer, December 17, 2011

By 

Charles O. Heller "Charles O. Heller" (Annapolis, MD, USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Romantic Education (Paperback)

I had read the 1981 edition of A ROMANTIC EDUCATION previously and found it a fabulous memoir, written with great sensitivity and elegance. I bought the newer edition because I wanted to read the added Afterword, describing Hampl's visits to the post-communist Czech lands. As a native Czech (a dual citizen of the US and the Czech Republic) and a memoirist, I was curious to read how her stories, her feelings, and her impressions matched up with those I had, returning to my native land after 40-plus years in exile. When I first came, after the Velvet Revolution, I had mixed feelings about people who had been, or whom I had suspected of having been, members of the Communist Party. After all, my parents and I had to escape on foot across the border from the Reds, and these people had stayed. Now, some 22 years after the Velvet Revolution, it was Ms. Hampl who expressed my feelings more eloquently and insightfully than I've been able to do in my own writing. She wrote:

"...I understood finally that I had no business judging any of it or any of them... The Czechs may want to be part of 'the West,' but they know the West -- me with my blue American passport -- can't be part of their tangled history, their inner family. I may have 'my Mala Strana apartment,' but I'm forever a tourist on the bridge, dazzled by the scene."

My conclusion as well -- but she said it so much better! A terrific book!