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The book’s title, however, refers to Karel Gott, a pop singer nicknamed the Golden Nightingale who, like the majority of Czechs and Slovaks, played along with the Communist system. He even signed an “anti-Charter” petition; was unapologetic after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 for having done so, suggesting that the Charter ’77 movement was an Israeli plot; and, in 2006, opened a self-aggrandizing museum, Gottland, just outside Prague, that seems modeled on Elvis Presley’s Graceland.“Getting inside Gottland is like obtaining a seal of approval: The past is O.K.,” Mr. Szczygiel writes. Fans “loved Gott, and they made it through Communism along with him,” so visiting his shrine is a way “to confirm that their lives have been all right.”