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The Witch of Prague
In Cold War Czechoslovakia, dyslexic teenager Alica escapes her troubled home by answering a newspaper ad. Instructed in typing, deportment, and political intrigue by a forbidding older woman with a long history of manipulating powerful men, she becomes a secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she’s surrounded by surveillance, corruption, and rancid abuses.
When her mentor gifts her an ancient tapestry with mysterious properties, Alica finds herself haunted by dreams of a violent hunt and a mutilated forest. By day, her powers of manipulation are only growing—and around her, the currents of resistance are beginning to electrify the country. As her city teeters on the brink, Alica must uncover the power that only she can wield.
A work of magical realism set during the 1968 Prague Spring, The Witch of Prague is a book about bodily autonomy and the fight against authoritarian regimes everywhere.
When her mentor gifts her an ancient tapestry with mysterious properties, Alica finds herself haunted by dreams of a violent hunt and a mutilated forest. By day, her powers of manipulation are only growing—and around her, the currents of resistance are beginning to electrify the country. As her city teeters on the brink, Alica must uncover the power that only she can wield.
A work of magical realism set during the 1968 Prague Spring, The Witch of Prague is a book about bodily autonomy and the fight against authoritarian regimes everywhere.
388 pages, Paperback
Published March 17, 2026
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April 8, 2026I was drawn to pick this up at the distributor's table at AWP, as I'm always curious about novels set in Prague. Usually such novels by non-Czechs disappoint, but I was optimistic about this one, given that it's a magical realist tale set in 1967-68 and was inspired by the author's mother's "memories of her childhood and young adulthood" including a mentor with connections to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
I'm pleased to report that it's really good, an impressively haunting, uncomfortable look at life just before and during the Prague Spring, experienced by a girl just out of high school who's taken under the disturbing wing of a reclusive older woman with a typewriter and a mysterious tapestry depicting a unicorn hunt.
While the author did not herself grow up in Czechoslovakia or the Czech Republic, and did not personally experience the Prague Spring, she succeeds in capturing some of the flavor of life in that time and place--she knows enough to make it real to the reader, conveying both some of the grittiness and some of the exuberance. Alica is a child of the proletariat, as far as we can tell from her home life, but growing up the daughter of workers during the fifties and sixties hasn't brought her any of the class privileges promised by Communism--she's poor, she's dyslexic, she lives in Holešovice, and she's neither deeply imbibed the teachings of Communism nor taken any particular interest in the forbidden pleasures of Western capitalism. Rather, she wants to learn to type, to get a job, have some nice clothes, and get away from her turbulent stepfather. To her surprise, lessons from her crochety typing teacher lead her not only to a government job, but to a whole rat's nest of political, romantic, and magical complications.
I heartily recommend this novel, but I also have some nits to pick--things I would actually like the author and publisher to address for the next printing.
Czech words and names have a history of getting mangled in English-language books; sometimes they're needlessly translated, sometimes they're misspelled. I'd hoped for better than that in a book by an author with a Czech mother, but Czech words and names in this book are spelled with no consistent orthography. The castle Hradčany and the politician Dubček are, weirdly, misspelled Hradczany and Dubczek as if written in Polish rather than Czech, while Karel Čapek is correctly spelled. Czech diacritics are used for some words, like the name Agáta, but Agáta is referred to as Pani Riedl rather than Paní Riedlová, while other female characters' surnames get the feminine ending but as -ova rather than ová. Lack of diacritics leads to uncertainty how some characters' names should be pronounced--Vasek or Vašek? This is particularly annoying and distracting to any reader who knows some Czech, but as these days Prague is a popular tourist destination, even non-speakers of Czech may end up a little confused. So please, please, correct the spellings for the next printing! And--not a spelling gripe, but when Alica transfers to the Defense Ministry near the Stag Moat and works under a woman named Jelenkova, surely it ought to be meaningful that the name refers to deer?
There are also occasional oddities of terminology here and there. Early on, typewriter ribbons are referred to as "ink tape." Huh? Toward the end, there are references to a "photo camera." What? Unless this is a movie camera, it's just a camera (or else, more specifically, a Leica or Rolleiflex or Brownie or whatnot). There were a few other things like this that I've forgotten. Just fix them, okay?
Again, the above are nits, not actual problems with the novel, but a novel this good deserves to have them fixed.
I'm pleased to report that it's really good, an impressively haunting, uncomfortable look at life just before and during the Prague Spring, experienced by a girl just out of high school who's taken under the disturbing wing of a reclusive older woman with a typewriter and a mysterious tapestry depicting a unicorn hunt.
While the author did not herself grow up in Czechoslovakia or the Czech Republic, and did not personally experience the Prague Spring, she succeeds in capturing some of the flavor of life in that time and place--she knows enough to make it real to the reader, conveying both some of the grittiness and some of the exuberance. Alica is a child of the proletariat, as far as we can tell from her home life, but growing up the daughter of workers during the fifties and sixties hasn't brought her any of the class privileges promised by Communism--she's poor, she's dyslexic, she lives in Holešovice, and she's neither deeply imbibed the teachings of Communism nor taken any particular interest in the forbidden pleasures of Western capitalism. Rather, she wants to learn to type, to get a job, have some nice clothes, and get away from her turbulent stepfather. To her surprise, lessons from her crochety typing teacher lead her not only to a government job, but to a whole rat's nest of political, romantic, and magical complications.
I heartily recommend this novel, but I also have some nits to pick--things I would actually like the author and publisher to address for the next printing.
Czech words and names have a history of getting mangled in English-language books; sometimes they're needlessly translated, sometimes they're misspelled. I'd hoped for better than that in a book by an author with a Czech mother, but Czech words and names in this book are spelled with no consistent orthography. The castle Hradčany and the politician Dubček are, weirdly, misspelled Hradczany and Dubczek as if written in Polish rather than Czech, while Karel Čapek is correctly spelled. Czech diacritics are used for some words, like the name Agáta, but Agáta is referred to as Pani Riedl rather than Paní Riedlová, while other female characters' surnames get the feminine ending but as -ova rather than ová. Lack of diacritics leads to uncertainty how some characters' names should be pronounced--Vasek or Vašek? This is particularly annoying and distracting to any reader who knows some Czech, but as these days Prague is a popular tourist destination, even non-speakers of Czech may end up a little confused. So please, please, correct the spellings for the next printing! And--not a spelling gripe, but when Alica transfers to the Defense Ministry near the Stag Moat and works under a woman named Jelenkova, surely it ought to be meaningful that the name refers to deer?
There are also occasional oddities of terminology here and there. Early on, typewriter ribbons are referred to as "ink tape." Huh? Toward the end, there are references to a "photo camera." What? Unless this is a movie camera, it's just a camera (or else, more specifically, a Leica or Rolleiflex or Brownie or whatnot). There were a few other things like this that I've forgotten. Just fix them, okay?
Again, the above are nits, not actual problems with the novel, but a novel this good deserves to have them fixed.
November 12, 2025
I knew I would love this but it really was like nothing I've ever read before.
Pick it up and support small presses ❤️
Pick it up and support small presses ❤️
May 4, 2026
3.5 rounded up!!! here are some thoughts on a book that is good but just might not have been for me.
- plot was really interesting but maybe was one of the only things motivating me to continue reading; in that it is a boon for there were moments where my jaw dropped and moments where i felt like i could not breathe properly, and on another front it might be a deficit in that i had to force myself past certain points because my interest was waning.
- on the front of the book, i think the narrative style was just not really for me. not a fault of the book by any means, and in fact a strength because it did successfully come across as quite czechoslovakian in nature! and not to critique the character work at all, as in fact the characters were really quite lovely, and i grew really fond of alica throughout the book. something about the narrative style though just didn't quite capture me. not sure why.
- on the whole, i did really enjoy the book's setting, and structure. the pacing perhaps could have been better, but the story unfolded well. i particularly liked the way in which the book started (first two pages or so) and ended (very last page).
- the ending overall did confuse me a little, mostly because everything suddenly was moving very fast. logically i also understand why the author made the choices she did plot wise at the end, particularly with regards to the themes of the book, but there was definitely a part of me that had to suspend my beliefs in order to accept the ending moments of the book.
- honestly i might just not be the biggest fan of european books/books that have european vibes. idk. because there was really nothing wrong with this book!!! and in fact a lot of things that it did right. just didn't click for me i guess.
there were definitely strengths to the book, and for anyone who likes historical fiction set in europe i would still recommend it!! but unfortunately it didn't quite end up being my cup of tea
- plot was really interesting but maybe was one of the only things motivating me to continue reading; in that it is a boon for there were moments where my jaw dropped and moments where i felt like i could not breathe properly, and on another front it might be a deficit in that i had to force myself past certain points because my interest was waning.
- on the front of the book, i think the narrative style was just not really for me. not a fault of the book by any means, and in fact a strength because it did successfully come across as quite czechoslovakian in nature! and not to critique the character work at all, as in fact the characters were really quite lovely, and i grew really fond of alica throughout the book. something about the narrative style though just didn't quite capture me. not sure why.
- on the whole, i did really enjoy the book's setting, and structure. the pacing perhaps could have been better, but the story unfolded well. i particularly liked the way in which the book started (first two pages or so) and ended (very last page).
- the ending overall did confuse me a little, mostly because everything suddenly was moving very fast. logically i also understand why the author made the choices she did plot wise at the end, particularly with regards to the themes of the book, but there was definitely a part of me that had to suspend my beliefs in order to accept the ending moments of the book.
- honestly i might just not be the biggest fan of european books/books that have european vibes. idk. because there was really nothing wrong with this book!!! and in fact a lot of things that it did right. just didn't click for me i guess.
there were definitely strengths to the book, and for anyone who likes historical fiction set in europe i would still recommend it!! but unfortunately it didn't quite end up being my cup of tea
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This fantasy novel is about Prague in 1967-68, and what it takes for a young woman to survive and thrive in the Communist environment there.
Alicia has a mentor, an older woman with a unicorn tapestry on her wall. The mentor guides Alicia in her advancement through the bureaucratic system, gaining help from various people who are grateful to the mentor for unspecified reasons. It becomes clear that the tapestry has something to do with the mentor's influence over others.
The mentor counsels Alicia through the book, in how to navigate the fraught world of Communist and male-dominated bureaucracy and how to work with the tapestry to influence events.
The book mainly reads as a coming-of-age novel about a young woman (18 years old) in Communist Prague. There is a lot of background on Prague and the society of the time, both the bureaucracy and the society as a whole. The fantasy element doesn't become pronounced until about 100 pages in. By that time we are invested in the well-being of the first-person narrator, Alicia. She is often confused and self-questioning, which feels very typical for a young woman who just exited adolescence and is abruptly thrust into the rapacious world of Communist Czechoslovakia.
Because the novel is set in 1967-68, anybody who knows anything about the Prague Spring knows what's coming. There are real people (like Alexander Dubczek) cited. The author can't change history, but with the use of the tapestry she can present an alternative answer to why things happened the way they did. Without giving away spoilers, I can say that I also liked the way that 'magic' did not solve all the problems - the Prague Spring still played out the way it did in real life.
I found the most interesting parts of the book were the descriptions of how people lived in a client state of the Soviet Union during the 1960s, how the people (especially the students) chafed at the Soviet imposed bureaucracy, and the way that the politics changed that led to the Prague Spring.
Disclaimer: I received an advanced reading copy from the publisher in order to provide an honest pre-publication review. The book is likely to be published in March 2026.
Alicia has a mentor, an older woman with a unicorn tapestry on her wall. The mentor guides Alicia in her advancement through the bureaucratic system, gaining help from various people who are grateful to the mentor for unspecified reasons. It becomes clear that the tapestry has something to do with the mentor's influence over others.
The mentor counsels Alicia through the book, in how to navigate the fraught world of Communist and male-dominated bureaucracy and how to work with the tapestry to influence events.
The book mainly reads as a coming-of-age novel about a young woman (18 years old) in Communist Prague. There is a lot of background on Prague and the society of the time, both the bureaucracy and the society as a whole. The fantasy element doesn't become pronounced until about 100 pages in. By that time we are invested in the well-being of the first-person narrator, Alicia. She is often confused and self-questioning, which feels very typical for a young woman who just exited adolescence and is abruptly thrust into the rapacious world of Communist Czechoslovakia.
Because the novel is set in 1967-68, anybody who knows anything about the Prague Spring knows what's coming. There are real people (like Alexander Dubczek) cited. The author can't change history, but with the use of the tapestry she can present an alternative answer to why things happened the way they did. Without giving away spoilers, I can say that I also liked the way that 'magic' did not solve all the problems - the Prague Spring still played out the way it did in real life.
I found the most interesting parts of the book were the descriptions of how people lived in a client state of the Soviet Union during the 1960s, how the people (especially the students) chafed at the Soviet imposed bureaucracy, and the way that the politics changed that led to the Prague Spring.
Disclaimer: I received an advanced reading copy from the publisher in order to provide an honest pre-publication review. The book is likely to be published in March 2026.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
The Witch of Prague by JM Sidorova, the first novel released by small press Homeward Books, reminded me of the epic, dark, surrealist world of The Master and Margarita, a comparison I don't grant lightly. Alica is a young, dyslexic girl desperate to escape her stepfather. She leaps at the chance to learn typing from an old woman with a mysterious unicorn tapestry on her wall. When Pani Agáta tells her that with the power of the tapestry, she can gain enough power to make a place for herself in the 1960s Czech government, Alica is skeptical at first. But under her training, Alica begins to get more powerful—and also more mixed up in powers greater than her understanding.
This novel is twisting, dark, and hard to put down. It is a true fairy tale, in the tradition of Angela Carter, dark and bloody and yes, imbued with violence—both the insidious grey of oppressive bureaucracy and the outright cruelty of misogyny and the sexual advances of powerful men. The magic of the tapestry is subtle and ambiguous (until of course, it's not). The desire to have the power she needs to control her life, to achieve autonomy over the men (bad and beloved) around her, is so great that she falls in thrall to the tapestry and its thick fringe and strange dreams. Sidorova's Prague is richly realized and tangible, as are her characters; the climax is suspenseful and wriggling, tense and shocking. Alica and her tapestry explore the power of words in a surveillance state, the infuriating things women must endure in a world rife with rape culture, and the endurance of a people determined to survive. Certain to be one of my favorites of the year, and a very exciting start for the perspective and taste of new Homeward Books.
Strong content warnings for sexual harassment, sexual assault, and state violence; also for ableist language, implied pedophilia, domestic abuse.
This novel is twisting, dark, and hard to put down. It is a true fairy tale, in the tradition of Angela Carter, dark and bloody and yes, imbued with violence—both the insidious grey of oppressive bureaucracy and the outright cruelty of misogyny and the sexual advances of powerful men. The magic of the tapestry is subtle and ambiguous (until of course, it's not). The desire to have the power she needs to control her life, to achieve autonomy over the men (bad and beloved) around her, is so great that she falls in thrall to the tapestry and its thick fringe and strange dreams. Sidorova's Prague is richly realized and tangible, as are her characters; the climax is suspenseful and wriggling, tense and shocking. Alica and her tapestry explore the power of words in a surveillance state, the infuriating things women must endure in a world rife with rape culture, and the endurance of a people determined to survive. Certain to be one of my favorites of the year, and a very exciting start for the perspective and taste of new Homeward Books.
Strong content warnings for sexual harassment, sexual assault, and state violence; also for ableist language, implied pedophilia, domestic abuse.
May 10, 2026
🌟🌟🌟.5
-
“What was most important, I'd found this edge of a better life all by myself and reached and grabbed onto it, it was my thing, my own thing that I started, and I wasn't going to give up easily and spoil it and fall back to having nothing but my home—the home where my mother and stepfather fought, where my stepfather had his vodka for breakfast before his bedtime and watched with a saccharine smile as my mother and I dressed.”
-
The Witch of Prague is set against the real backdrop of the Prague Spring: 1967-68, Czechoslovakia on the edge of something. Alica is a young typist for the communist regime who stumbles into low-level espionage that slowly raises the stakes. It’s a coming-of-age story about a woman finding her footing and her influence in a world that wasn’t built for either.
The speculative layer is an effective twist. A magical unicorn tapestry that weaves through the story complicating Alica’s decisions in a captivating way. Half a star off for pacing in the middle third, but otherwise enjoyable. A strong pick if you like your historical fiction with a little strangeness folded in.
-
“What was most important, I'd found this edge of a better life all by myself and reached and grabbed onto it, it was my thing, my own thing that I started, and I wasn't going to give up easily and spoil it and fall back to having nothing but my home—the home where my mother and stepfather fought, where my stepfather had his vodka for breakfast before his bedtime and watched with a saccharine smile as my mother and I dressed.”
-
The Witch of Prague is set against the real backdrop of the Prague Spring: 1967-68, Czechoslovakia on the edge of something. Alica is a young typist for the communist regime who stumbles into low-level espionage that slowly raises the stakes. It’s a coming-of-age story about a woman finding her footing and her influence in a world that wasn’t built for either.
The speculative layer is an effective twist. A magical unicorn tapestry that weaves through the story complicating Alica’s decisions in a captivating way. Half a star off for pacing in the middle third, but otherwise enjoyable. A strong pick if you like your historical fiction with a little strangeness folded in.
April 30, 2026
Really comes together in the second half - it's pitched as about bodily autonomy but it really deals more broadly with the idea of power. How is power wielded? how many different shapes can it take? I really liked the character of Vasek and his interactions with Alica particularly, lots of nuance in a way that made this feel like a true coming of age novel - how do we start seeing other people as fully realised as ourselves, and what happens when we do? The setting was also great, very vivid.
stellar launch book for Homeward Books and I'm pumped for the Zen Cho novella they have coming next!
4.5 stars
stellar launch book for Homeward Books and I'm pumped for the Zen Cho novella they have coming next!
4.5 stars
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
I was kindly sent an advance copy of The Witch of Prague by Homeward Books. It’s a compelling work of historical fiction with elements of magical realism.
Set during the Prague Spring of 1968, it follows a young protagonist and her attempts to become a typist despite being dyslexic — with or without magic.
The book is rich in metaphors and allusions, and the writing is strong throughout.
I really enjoyed it — it’s a thoughtful story about resilience, quiet strength, and the fragile space between history and hope.
Set during the Prague Spring of 1968, it follows a young protagonist and her attempts to become a typist despite being dyslexic — with or without magic.
The book is rich in metaphors and allusions, and the writing is strong throughout.
I really enjoyed it — it’s a thoughtful story about resilience, quiet strength, and the fragile space between history and hope.
November 26, 2025
I loved this heartfelt, complex, genre-bending novel. There is romance, mentorship, politics, corruption, intrigue, and a hefty does of magic. So glad I got to read this one and happy to recommend it to everyone!
April 14, 2026
Truly wonderful. Could not put it down. Happy, sad and thought provoking
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Loved it! Great storytelling. I binged the whole book in a day.
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