SOURCE: A review of By Night Under the Stone Bridge, in The New York Times Book Review, May 27, 1990, p. 16.

In the following review, Clyde praises By Night Under a Stone Bridge as imaginative and pleasant to read.

In Prague at the end of the 16th century, the court of the mad Emperor Rudolf II bulges with flatterers, opportunists and spies, while the city itself swarms with pestilence, destitution and crime. Corrupt from top to bottom, the remains of the Holy Roman Empire teeter on the verge of economic and moral collapse. But in this charming fable by Leo Perutz,… moments of connection, both earthly and surreal, draw the community together. Rudolf won't choose a bride because he's fallen irretrievably in love with a completely unsuitable woman—Esther, the beautiful wife of a ghetto merchant named Meisl, a man "so rich that he spreads sugar on his honey." To...