Guided Tours of Hell

Invited to Prague’s first annual Kafka conference to read from his play about the great Czech writer, a playwright named Landau finds himself upstaged by Jiri Krakauer, the dashing Holocaust survivor whose claim to fame is a long-ago death-camp love affair with Kafka’s sister. On a visit to the camp, Landau attempts to prove that Krakauer is lying—risking his career to destroy that of another.

On the other side of Europe, Nina and Leo go on a macabre tour of their own. A guidebook editor and his besotted assistant, they are enduring a miserable French vacation when Leo suggests a “Paris Death Trip,” taking in catacombs, prisons, and all the darkest corners of the City of Light.

In these two novellas, Francine Prose skewers Americans abroad.