'In 1994, with a battered copy of Let's Go Europe stuffed in her backpack, Tanya Heaslip left her safe life as a lawyer in outback Australia and travelled to the post-communist Czech Republic. Dismissing concerns from family and friends that her safety and career were at risk, she arrived with no teaching experience whatsoever, to work at a high school in a town she'd never heard of, where the winters plunge to minus 20 degrees Celsius. During her childhood on an isolated cattle station in Central Australia, Tanya had always dreamt of adventure and romance in Europe, but the Czech Republic was not the stuff of her dreams.
'On arrival, however, she falls headlong into misadventures that change her life forever. This land of castles, history and culture opened up to her and she to it. In love with Prague and her people, particularly with the charismatic Karel, who takes her into his home, his family and as far as he can into his heart, Tanya learns about lives very different to hers. Alice to Prague is bittersweet story of a search for identity, belonging and love, set in a time, a place and with a man that fill Tanya's life with contradictions.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Alice to Prague and In Love with the World are very different books with contrasting styles and perspectives and different stories to tell. Yet, fundamentally, the theme of the books is the same. Both authors choose to leave a comfortably familiar and orderly life among family and friends, and set off into strange territories to live among people whose backgrounds, experiences and expectations are alien to them. Both set out full of excitement, optimism and hope and both, at times, suffer severe disorientation, panic, doubt and terrible loneliness.' (Introduction)
'Alice to Prague and In Love with the World are very different books with contrasting styles and perspectives and different stories to tell. Yet, fundamentally, the theme of the books is the same. Both authors choose to leave a comfortably familiar and orderly life among family and friends, and set off into strange territories to live among people whose backgrounds, experiences and expectations are alien to them. Both set out full of excitement, optimism and hope and both, at times, suffer severe disorientation, panic, doubt and terrible loneliness.' (Introduction)
