Minneapolis native Arthur Phillips novel is set in Budapest in 1990. It's called "Prague" though, because that's where the expatriate Americans in the story worry they really should be. The group includes entrepreneurs, writers and diplomats, caught in the excitement of the fall of Eastern European totalitarianism. Yet they can't shake the feeling they are missing the real action elsewhere. Arthur Phillips himself lived in the Hungarian capital in the early nineties. His novel had drawn critical acclaim for it's depiction of a unique period of recent history. "Prague" opens with some of the Americans sitting in a cafe playing "Sincerity", a game where each player makes a series of statements, only one of which is true. The players score by fooling the other players and guessing correctly when they are lying. Phillips told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr the game reveals a great deal about the players.

This file was digitized with the help of a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).