Parasol Against the Axe

January 1, 2024
Years ago, Hero Tojosoa, Sofie Cibulkova, and Dorothea Gilmartin were united in a criminal venture, but now they're barely friendly. Yet when Sofie invites both Hero and Thea to her bachelorette weekend in Prague, they both show up. Hero is on the run after receiving a letter from beyond the grave that would force her to face her own accountability in how she chose to frame the story in the book she wrote. Rather than spend time with Sofie and her betrothed, Polly, Hero opts to lose herself in Paradoxical Undressing, a novel gifted to her by her 15-year-old son. Little does she know that Thea, who has a secret reason for being in Prague connected to the women's shared past, is reading the same book. Or that the story within changes depending on who is reading it and when they pick it up. A veritable Russian nesting doll of a novel, Oyeyemi's latest, following Peaces (2021), is a loving and lively tribute to Prague of the present and the past as well as the complexities of both female friendship and storytelling. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Many readers will be eager to come under the spell of best-selling Oyeyemi's newest magic realism adventure.

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Starred review from January 29, 2024
The bold, lucid, and experimental latest from Oyeyemi (Peaces) portrays Prague as a city of dreams and mysteries. The writer Hero Tojosoa, who publishes under the pen name Dorothea Gilman, accepts a last-minute invitation to a bachelorette party in Czechia hosted by two frenemies. She brings with her a copy of Paradoxical Undressing, a novel by mysterious Australian author Merlin Mwenda, which provides a different narrative each time it’s opened (Hero’s copy shifts overnight from a story of a love triangle in the court of King Rudolf III to one of a dyspeptic judge hoping to frame his own son for crimes against the Communist Party). Also in Prague is the real Dorothea Gilman, who has an axe to grind with Hero for using her name. Dorothea winds up with her own copy of Paradoxical Undressing, one that’s set in 1943 and concerns the perilous adventures of a dancer hoping to subvert the Nazi Protectorate from within. By the time Dorothea loses her copy of the Mwenda and tracks down a new one in a bookshop, the novel has changed into a madcap farce about rogue hairdresser Ataraxia “the Uglifier” Pham, who terrorized 2016 Prague by giving clients terrible hairdos. Bizarre doublings and subplots abound as Oyeyemi delightfully channels a Borgesian literary lunacy, revealing the connections between Hero and Dorothea and introducing the real Merlin Mwenda (now working as, of all things, an ersatz ice cream vendor). This is a metatextual masterpiece.

January 19, 2024

Accepting an invitation for a bachelorette party from estranged friend Sofie, Hero Tojosoa lands in Prague, a city full of more than the usual surprises. Unexpected companions appear, and the narrative of a book Hero is reading shape-shifts constantly, telling new stories about Prague even as the city comments on itself. From the Open Book-winning, Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist Oyeyemi. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from January 15, 2024
A trio of former friends is brought together in Prague in a novel narrated by the city itself. Hero Tojosoa, a journalist, comes to Prague at the invitation of her old friend, Sofie Cibulkova, who is having her hen weekend there. Though the two are no longer close, Hero is eager to run away from an issue plaguing her at home, one related to a book she has published under the pen name Dorothea Gilmartin. When Hero arrives in Prague on a hot summer day, she brings with her a novel her teen son gave her called Paradoxical Undressing, described as a "crazily tangible unhistory" of Prague. Nearby, Sofie and Hero's third former friend--also called Dorothea Gilmartin, the kind of surreal linkage Oyeyemi delights in--is in Prague on business, where she, too, is given a copy of Paradoxical Undressing. But though it's the same book, Thea and Hero aren't reading the same story; in fact, each time they return to their respective copies, the book has changed content, swooping into different moments of Prague's history, from the taxi dancers of World War II to physicians in the reign of King Rudolf II. As the mysterious novel's secrets multiply, Hero, Sofie, and Thea collide in the city with dramatic results. Oyeyemi writes here as an heir to Calvino or Borges, corkscrewing exuberantly through the alleys and roofscapes of her adopted city. (Born in Nigeria and raised in London, Oyeyemi now lives in the Czech capital.) Packing stories inside stories like a hall of mirrors can occasionally make for daunting, and even goofy, reading, but to write a "Prague book," Oyeyemi seems to say, layers of shape-shifting tales seem necessary to do it justice. A dizzying, dazzling romp through the intersection of political and personal histories.

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