Hear My Voice

International diplomacy has stopped working. A new breed of authoritarian ruler has emerged, contemptuous of the rules of diplomacy and collective security, and willing to lie and bully to build power and influence. Europe’s democracies are confused and defensive. It is 1938 and Germany is putting pressure on Czechoslovakia. A young man has arrived in Prague. His job is to interpret and translate, but he finds himself literally lost for words as conflicting versions of the truth fight for the upper hand. Straight lines begin to bend and the worst of Alice’s nightmares in Wonderland begin to come true. We think we know the world we live in, but there are darker realities lurking around the corner.

David Vaughan is a writer and broadcaster. Hear My Voice is his second book set in the tense atmosphere of Central Europe on the eve of WWII. A former BBC Prague correspondent, David Vaughan was editor-in-chief of the international service of Czech Radio for eight years. He studied Modern Languages (French and German) at Balliol College, Oxford and is also fluent in Czech, having lived in Prague since 1991. Hear My Voice was originally commissioned as a play for Czech Radio, and was then turned into a book which was awarded the Czech Book readers’ prize in 2015.