The city of Prague is inextricably linked to Franz Kafka, one of the best-known German-language authors in the world.
Born in the Czech capital in 1883, Kafka attracts many visitors to Prague even 100 years after his death.
Kafka was part of the city’s German-speaking Jewish minority and wrote novels, short stories and letters in German, including the world-famous “The Metamorphosis” and “The Trial.”
Fans of the author can go on Kafka-related tours that take in the various stations of his life or visit sights such as the Statue of Franz Kafka, the house where he was born or the Franz Kafka Museum.
Now, however, Prague has another major literary claim to fame, only this time, the city is itself the scene of a massive global bestseller.
Dan Brown’s popularity in Czechia
“The Secret of Secrets,” the latest novel by US thriller writer Dan Brown, has been topping bestseller lists all over the world since its release in early September.
In Czechia, which has a population of 10 million, about 120,000 copies were sold in the first week alone – a record, says literary critic Jana Podskalska.
“Other popular books sell that number in a month, Czech bestsellers in half a year,” Podskalska told DW. “The Czechs love Brown’s style of writing and the way he works with puzzles. At the sales launch at the City Hall in Prague’s Old Town, people camped out overnight and stood in line from the early morning. The last time that happened was when Harry Potter books went on sale,” she said.
Prague plays a starring role
But Prague is not just the setting for Brown’s novel, it also plays a major role in the book.
“We guessed that Prague would play a big role in Dan’s new novel about human consciousness,” said Petr Onufer, the Czech translator of the book, in the podcast Sbaleno. “But when I received the first version of the manuscript, I was really surprised. I very quickly realized that Prague itself was one of the main characters in the story.”
This is confirmed by Hana Gelnarova, director of programming at Argo, which published the Czech edition of the novel. “Dan Brown himself says that Prague is one of the main characters in the book,” she said.
Brown’s love of the Czech capital
“The Secret of Secrets” was published on September 9 in 50 languages. Czechia was one of the first countries worldwide where Brown himself launched the book in person.
The world-famous author was even invited to Prague Castle by Czech President Petr Pavel. Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda also presented Brown with the Key to the City.
“Prague is one of those places where you, for example, stand on Charles Bridge and look up at the castle and the towers and feel like you’re in a fantasy film. It’s hard to believe it’s all real. It’s wonderful,” Brown told Czech television, adding that he first visited the city in 1984.
Brown says that his latest release is his most sophisticated work to date: “It is the longest, has the most complex plot and the most characters,” he said.
Visits incognito
For Hana Gelnarova, the success was not a surprise: “His earlier books were bestsellers, so, we reckoned that this one would be, too,” she said.
Nor was the selection of Prague as the setting for the book a coincidence. “Brown has been here several times,” said Gelnarova. “He was fascinated by some things and specifically asked to be able to visit certain places. Sometimes he came incognito. Once before, over ten years ago, we thought he was maybe considering Prague as a setting for one of his books.”
Most Czech critics have been very positive about the book. “‘The Secret of Secrets’ is obviously his most ambitious work yet,” says literary critic Podskalska. “He uses recent findings from the field of neuroscience. It is relatively complex, long and includes a lot of Prague sights.”
A magnet for tourists
Prague and Czechia as a whole quickly realized that a Dan Brown bestseller set in the capital had the potential to provide a huge boost for tourism, which only recently recovered fully from the losses incurred during the COVID pandemic.
“Dan Brown’s latest book has enormous potential for making Czechia known worldwide,” Frantisek Reismüller, director of CzechTourism, told DW. “Prague features on the pages of a global bestseller, and readers will want to experience the atmosphere of the story for themselves.”
Tours relating to the book
In early September, around the time of the book’s release, Prague launched a special program of tours in Czech and English relating to the book.
“The interest is huge. These tours take visitors around Prague to the various stations of Dan Brown’s book. At the moment, they are booked out for weeks in advance,” Klara Janderova, spokesperson for Prague City Tourism, told DW. “We’ll be adding new tours to the program in the new year.”
Podskalska says that the novel takes in a surprising number of locations in Prague, including some that are off the beaten tourist track. “In the story about artificial intelligence, the possibilities of the human subconscious and traditional secret codes, he [Brown] has included not only well-known places such as Charles Bridge and Prague Castle, but also the Clementinum, the Petschek Villa or Bastion XV and the Folimanka underground bunker in a very clever way,” says Podskalska.
Another surge expected in two years
Janderova expects that a second wave of interest will come in two years, when a film adaptation of the novel is scheduled to be broadcast on Netflix. She says that many tourists already come to the city because of all the international films that are shot there.
Just how many tourists Dan Brown and his book will attract to Czechia and Prague will only become evident in the coming months.
Last year, 12 million foreign tourists visited the country, over 8 million of whom visited the capital. The largest group of tourists, approximately 2.4 million, is the Germans.
This article was originally published in German and was adapted and abridged by Aingeal Flanagan.
