This is Munich

Miroslav Šašek's pictorial guide to the metropolis close to us, supplemented by the booklet Mnichovská oklika by contemporary author Magdalena Rutová. The book by a classic and world-renowned illustrator is complemented by a funny and up-to-date view of an artist several generations younger.

Miroslav Šašek's heart was primarily at home in Paris, but he had background and friends who spoke his native language, and later love and family in Munich. In the years 1951–1957, he worked here in the editorial office of Radio Free Europe, to whose broadcasts - as the Czechoslovak Radio of the 1950s indignantly reported - "brought the manners of Parisian shanties".

And he came back here all his life. Perhaps that's why he looks with a smile at pot-bellied gentlemen in lederhosen, beer halls, somewhat cumbersome architecture and even at the föhn, an unpleasant wind that causes Munich's headaches.

The book also includes Magdalena Rutová's notebook, in which she tells about her visit to her aunt in Munich.