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Midnight Train to Prague: A Novel
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Published:
Grove Atlantic 2020
Status:
Available from OverDrive
Description

The acclaimed author of Home Schooling returns with a timeless tale of friendship, romance, betrayal, and survival that spans two world wars.
 
In 1927, as Natalia Faber travels from Berlin to Prague with her mother, their train is delayed in Saxon Switzerland. In the brief time the train is idle, Natalia learns the truth about her father—who she believed died during her infancy—and meets a remarkable woman named Dr. Magdalena Schaeffer, whose family will become a significant part of her future. Shaken by these events, Natalia arrives at a spa on the shore of Lake Hevíz in Hungary. Here, she meets Count Miklós Andorján, a journalist and adventurer. The following year, they will marry.
 
Years later, Germany has invaded Russia. When Miklós fails to return from the eastern front, Natalia goes to Prague to wait for him. With a pack of tarot cards, she sets up shop as a fortune teller, and she meets Anna Schaeffer, the daughter of the woman she met decades earlier on that stalled train. The Nazis accuse Natalia of spying, and she is sent to a concentration camp. Though they are separated, her friendship with Anna grows as they fight to survive and to be reunited with their families.
 
“An original and compelling story, told with vivid detail and a richness in setting that I absorbed in one sitting.”—Ellen Keith, bestselling author of The Dutch Wife
 
Praise for Homeschooling
“Carol Windley’s writing has a unique power, a perfect combination of delicacy, intensity, and fearless imagination.”—Alice Munro
“Startlingly lovely.”—Seattle Times

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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
11/03/2020
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780802146502
ASIN:
B0861SW18L
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Carol Windley. (2020). Midnight Train to Prague: A Novel. Grove Atlantic.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Carol Windley. 2020. Midnight Train to Prague: A Novel. Grove Atlantic.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Carol Windley, Midnight Train to Prague: A Novel. Grove Atlantic, 2020.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Carol Windley. Midnight Train to Prague: A Novel. Grove Atlantic, 2020.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Date Added:
Oct 30, 2020 16:08:50
Date Updated:
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fullDescription

The acclaimed author of Home Schooling returns with a timeless tale of friendship, romance, betrayal, and survival that spans two world wars.
 
In 1927, as Natalia Faber travels from Berlin to Prague with her mother, their train is delayed in Saxon Switzerland. In the brief time the train is idle, Natalia learns the truth about her father—who she believed died during her infancy—and meets a remarkable woman named Dr. Magdalena Schaeffer, whose family will become a significant part of her future. Shaken by these events, Natalia arrives at a spa on the shore of Lake Hevíz in Hungary. Here, she meets Count Miklós Andorján, a journalist and adventurer. The following year, they will marry.
 
Years later, Germany has invaded Russia. When Miklós fails to return from the eastern front, Natalia goes to Prague to wait for him. With a pack of tarot cards, she sets up shop as a fortune teller, and she meets Anna Schaeffer, the daughter of the woman she met decades earlier on that stalled train. The Nazis accuse Natalia of spying, and she is sent to a concentration camp. Though they are separated, her friendship with Anna grows as they fight to survive and to be reunited with their families.
 
“An original and compelling story, told with vivid detail and a richness in setting that I absorbed in one sitting.”—Ellen Keith, bestselling author of The Dutch Wife
 
Praise for Homeschooling
“Carol Windley’s writing has a unique power, a perfect combination of delicacy, intensity, and fearless imagination.”—Alice Munro
“Startlingly lovely.”—Seattle Times

reviews
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        September 14, 2020
        In Windley’s enthralling epic (after the collection Breathing Under Water), a chance meeting on a train leads to a bond between two women decades later. Fourteen-year-old Natalia Faber and her mother, Beatriz, leave their home near Berlin in 1927 to visit a spa in Hungary. Natalia watches a man dying on their train as a young doctor, Magdalena Schaefferova, tries to save him. While staying at the spa, Beatriz meets Miklós Andorján, a budding journalist, and the next year they are married. In 1942, Miklós goes east to Russia on an assignment, and Natalia goes to Prague to find him. While in Prague, Natalia makes a meager living telling fortunes, gets reacquainted with Magdalena, and meets Magdalena’s daughter, Anna, before Natalia is sent to a concentration camp as a political prisoner. After her camp is liberated, Natalia reunites with Anna and continues the search for Miklós, while Anna reckons with the effects of the war on her own family. The author skillfully conveys the political and social upheaval in WWII-era Europe through the perspectives of journalists, soldiers, and doctors. Fans of WWII fiction will appreciate this accomplished take.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        September 15, 2020
        A 1927 train journey from Berlin to Prague becomes a pivotal life-changing experience for a wealthy German widow and her daughter in award-winning Canadian author Windley's first novel since Breathing Under Water (1998). Sixteen-year-old Natalia Faber is pulled out of her convent boarding school to serve as her idiosyncratic and narcissist mother Beatriz's traveling companion. When their train to Prague is delayed by a flooded branch line, Natalia volunteers to watch the young son of Czech doctor Magdalena Schaefferov� as she attends a sick passenger. Later arriving at a spa on the shore of Lake H�v�z in Hungary, the Fabers meet Mikl�s Andorj�n, a Hungarian count and journalist, and his on-again, off-again love interest, Zita Kuznetsova, whom Natalia recognizes as the occupants of a speeding blue car she had admired from the train. Not long after, the impulsive Beatriz takes off with Zita for the Dalmatian coast. Out of this inauspicious beginning, a romance between Natalia and Mikl�s eventually blossoms, and they marry, splitting their time between Berlin and a rural Hungarian estate. But World War II separates them when Mikl�s heads to Russia to report on the Eastern Front. Believing her husband's promise that they would reunite in Prague in the spring of 1942, Natalia goes there to wait for him and meets Anna, the 13-year-old daughter of Dr. Schaefferov�. Both get caught up in the brutality of the Nazi occupation. Like Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, Windley's ambitious novel, switching points of view among Natalia, Anna, and, briefly, Mikl�s, vividly captures the devastating losses that war inflicts on ordinary people. But in trying to cover so much history across three different countries, it also feels crammed with too many contrived coincidences and sketchily drawn people (a cast of characters to keep track of all these secondary players would have been helpful). A flawed but haunting and beautifully detailed story of love, loss, and survival during some of history's darkest hours.

        COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        October 1, 2020

        A fateful 1927 train journey with her mother introduces Natalia to several people who will be influential in her life, including a female doctor called to assist a sick man and a dashing motorist whom Natalia spies from the train window. She soon learns the motorist is Miklos Count Andorjan, a journalist who also owns a large estate in Hungary. Marriage to Miklos allows Natalia a welcome escape from her flighty, immature mother, but the arrival of World War II forces Natalia and Miklos apart. When her path crosses in Prague with that of the doctor's young daughter, Anna, the two women's stories intertwine. VERDICT In her second novel (following 1998's Breathing Underwater and two story collections), Canadian writer Windley delivers well-researched descriptions of daily life in 1920s-40s Eastern Europe that will appeal to readers who enjoy immersive scene setting. The number of characters and the frequent jumps between them give the book a slightly crowded feel that is particularly noticeable in the first half, but the second half is more consistently engaging. Recommended for those readers who can't get enough of World War II historical fiction, particularly for those interested in civilians' experiences in Eastern Europe.--Mara Bandy Fass, Champaign P.L., IL

        Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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The acclaimed author of Home Schooling returns with a timeless tale of friendship, romance, betrayal, and survival that spans two world wars.
 
In 1927, as Natalia Faber travels from Berlin to Prague with her mother, their train is delayed in Saxon Switzerland. In the brief time the train is idle, Natalia learns the truth about her father—who she believed died during her infancy—and meets a remarkable woman named Dr. Magdalena Schaeffer, whose family will become a significant part of her future. Shaken by these events, Natalia arrives at a spa on the shore of Lake Hevíz in Hungary. Here, she meets Count Miklós Andorján, a journalist and adventurer. The following year, they will marry.
 
Years later, Germany has invaded Russia. When Miklós fails to return from the eastern front, Natalia goes to Prague to wait for him. With a pack of tarot cards, she sets up shop as a...

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