Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Prague Sonata … then take off on your own:
1. In what way does Bradford Morrow's novel resemble a musical sonata, the object at the heart of its plot?
2. One of the difficult questions posed by The Prague Sonata is what should be done with unclaimed relics of war. Who rightfully owns them? Can music be stolen or misused? What are your thoughts after having read Morrow's novel?
3. Follow-up to Question 2: What is the significance of Werner Herzog's epigraph — "Eternity depends on whether people are willing to take care of something" — and how does it relate to The Prague Sonata?
4. If you have read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code or Inferno, do you recognize similarities in those books and this one, say, in terms of set-up and basic plot elements, character development, suspense, or style? In what ways do the novels differ?
5. What does the novel suggest, symbolically, about the power of music as it spans generations, war, and diaspora?
6. How familiar were you (are you) with the history of what is now the Czech Republic: its founding after World War I, the World War II years, its post-war years under communism, and now as a representative democracy?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)