The Absolute at Large by Karel Čapek; introduction by Stephen BaxterIn this satirical classic, a brilliant scientist invents the Karburator, a reactor that can create abundant and practically free energy. However, the machine works by completely annihilating matter and in so doing releases the Absolute, the spiritual essence held within all matter, into the world. Infected by the pure Absolute, the world's population becomes consumed with religious and national fervor, the effects of which ultimately cause a devastating global war.
Call Number: YRL PG5038.C3 T613 2005
ISBN: 0803264593
Date: 2005
Cross Roads by Karel Čapek ; translated from the Czech and introduction by Norma Comrada ; illustrated by Paul HoffmanWritten during and right after World War I, this volume pairs two collections of short stories. The first collection, "Wayside Crosses," presents an agonized and unsuccessful search for God and truth. These metaphysical tales explore man's limitations, his terror and helplessness, and place value on the ongoing search. The second collection, "Painful Tales," contains realistic stories of characters being forced to make choices in which one good conflicts with another.
Three Novels: Hordubal; Meteor; An Ordinary Life by Karel Čapek ; translated from the Czech by M. and R. Weatherall ; introduction by William HarkinsThe novels in this unusual philosophical trilogy share neither characters nor events, Instead, they provide different answers to the question of how we know other people. Detectives faced with a murder reconstruct the crime, but not the character of the victim. Three people tell stories about a dying pilot they know almost nothing about; each story is as full of truth as it is devoid of facts. And one man looks back on his life and discovers all the people he might have been.
The Gardener's Year by Karel Čapek; illustrated by Josef ČapekKarel Čapek's satiric gifts take a different turn in this impishly comic book, which recounts the trials, labors, joys, and meditations of the amateur gardener. Rather than a how-to book, Čapek's volume offers a lighthearted mock-treatise on the pains and rewards of tending a small and resistant garden plot. The drawings are delightful.
A documentary film on Kanopy, from the series "How Great Science Fiction Works," about the evolution of the robot in science fiction from Čapek to Asimov. Narrated by Gary K. Wolfe.
Lost in the Shadow of the Word: Space, Time and Freedom in Interwar Eastern Europe by Benjamin Paloff"Scholars of modernism have long addressed how literature, painting, and music reflected the radical reconceptualization of space and time in the early twentieth century—a veritable revolution in both physics and philosophy that has been characterized as precipitating an “epistemic trauma” around the world. In this wide-ranging study, Benjamin Paloff contends that writers in Central and Eastern Europe felt this impact quite distinctly from their counterparts in Western Europe. For the latter, the destabilization of traditional notions of space and time inspired works that saw in it a new kind of freedom. However, for many Central and Eastern European authors, who were writing from within public discourses about how to construct new social realities, the need for escape met the realization that there was both nowhere to escape to and no stable delineation of what to escape from. In reading the prose and poetry of Czech, Polish, and Russian writers, Paloff imbues the term “Kafkaesque” with a complexity so far missing from our understanding of this moment in literary history."
Call Number: YRL ; PG509.S65 P35 2016. Also Online
ISBN: 0810134152
Date: 2016
Art and Life in Modernist Prague: Karel Čapek and his Generation by Thomas OrtIn most contemporary historical writing the picture of modern life in Habsburg Central Europe is a gloomy story of the failure of rationalism and the rise of protofascist movements. This book tells a different story, focusing on the Czech writers and artists distinguished by their optimistic view of the world in the years before WWI. Available in print only.
Call Number: YRL ; PG5038.C3 Z828 2013. Also Online
ISBN: 1137077395
Date: 2013
The Bohemian Body: Gender and Sexuality in Modern Czech Culture by Alfred ThomasThe Bohemian Body examines the modernist forces within nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe that helped shape both Czech nationalism and artistic interaction among ethnic and social groups--Czechs and Germans, men and women, gays and straights. The author re-examines the work of key Czech writers and poets from the National Revival to the Velvet Revolution. The result is a seemingly paradoxical yet nuanced understanding of Czech culture (including literature, opera, and film), long overlooked or misunderstood by Western scholars.
Call Number: YRL ; PG5006.3.G46 T48 2007
ISBN: 9780299222802
Date: 2007
Critical Survey of Long Fiction, v. 1 by Carl Rollyson and Frank N. Magill (Editors)This series contains in-depth analytical reference guides to 463 major writers of world literature. The series has an accessible style and format that allows readers to zero in on precise characteristics of an author's work. Essays are arranged alphabetically by author, and begin with dates and places of birth and death. The essays also include a list of the author's principal long fiction, a brief overview of other literary forms, the authors biography and achievements, and a comprehensive analysis of each work.
Call Number: SRLF ; PN3451 .C75 2000
ISBN: 089356883X
Date: 2nd ed., 1999
Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day by Richard Bleiler (Editor)The Scribner Writers Series has set the standard for literary reference for more than 25 years. In addition to addressing the lives and careers of important writers, the articles discuss the themes and styles of major works and place them in pertinent historical, social and political contexts for today's readers. Novelists, playwrights, essayists, poets, short story writers, and more recently, genre writers in science fiction and mystery, are all expertly discussed in the more than 16 sets comprising this series.Since the first edition was published in 1999, 20 new essays have been added on authors ranging from Gregory Benford and Katherine MacLean to Lucius Shepard and Gene Wolfe. In addition, 19 essays have been extensively revised. Pictures of most of the 96 authors have been added, and the set has been reorganized in alphabetical order for ease of use.
Call Number: YRL ; PS374.S35 S36 1982. Also Online
ISBN: 9780684805931
Date: 2nd ed., 1999
Karel Čapek: In Pursuit of Truth, Tolerance, and Trust by Bohuslava BradbrookKAREL CAPEK is the most important, most versatile, but also the most neglected Czech writer of the 20th century. His plays R.U.R. and From the Life of Insects created a sensation in London in the 1920's: his word robot was introduced into the Oxford English Dictionary while his other plays as well as novels, short stories, essays, travelogues and causeries followed in English translations in qiuick succession until cultural links were broken off by the war. Because of his liberal, anti-war views Capek's works were blacklisted by the Nazis occupying his homeland, as well as later by the communists. Presenting a study of all genres Capek used, Bradbrook's book pays the debt history owes to Capek. It is also the first original book on Capek published in the UK. Both as a writer an as a journalist, Capek sought the truth: in the epistemological sense, how we acquire knowledge; in the moral one, how we apply it to our behaviour. Recongizing great differences between individuals, Capek recommends torerance and mutual trust as the best way towards the improvement of democratic human relations. His philosophical trilogy - HODUBAL, METEOR and AN ORDINARY LIFE - is the best artistic expression of these ideas; as a journalist, he conveyed them explicitly. Capek's science fiction works show his admiration for the achievements of science and technology; he forecast the use of nuclear power, but also strongly warned against its abuse. His English readers particularly appreciated his common sense, wit and humor. Karel Capek was a man who taught through laughter.
Call Number: YRL ; PG5038.C3 B73 1998
ISBN: 1898723850
Date: 1998
The Narratives of Čapek and Čexov: A Typological Comparison of the Authors' World Views by Peter Z. Schubert"Comparing the affinities between the writers Capek and Cexov, the author provides us with a thorough study that is long overdue. The parallels between these two great Czech writers were first observed almost half a century ago, and commented on in passing by no less than seven scholars. The critics' allusions would suggest that similarity exists in the stories' quality, in the writers' artistic method, stylistic structure, and language as well as in the atmosphere, or mood, of the narratives. The affinity found in the similar treatment of analogous subjects has remained until now an entirely unexplored field. While Capek, the creator of The Good Soldier Schweik is relatively well known outside of Central Europe, Cexov remains an undiscovered country for most. This Professor Schubert has remedied by this timely and intriguing literary study."--BOOK JACKET. In print only.
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