Background
Born in northeastern Bohemia on January 9, 1890, Karel Capek was the son of a physician.
(A visionary work of science fiction that introduced the w...)
A visionary work of science fiction that introduced the word "robot" Written in 1920, premiered in Prague in 1921, and first performed in New York in 1922garnered worldwide acclaim for its author and popularized the word robot. Mass-produced as efficient laborers to serve man, Capeks Robots are an android productthey remember everything but think of nothing new. But the Utopian life they provide ultimately lacks meaning, and the humans they serve stop reproducing. When the Robots revolt, killing all but one of their masters, they must strain to learn the secret of self-duplication. It is not until two Robots fall in love and are christened Adam and Eve by the last surviving human that Nature emerges triumphant. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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( In this satirical classic, a brilliant scientist invent...)
In this satirical classic, a brilliant scientist invents the Karburator, a reactor that can create abundant and practically free energy. However, the Karburatorâs superefficient energy production also yields a powerful by-product. 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 heady, pure Absolute, the worldâs population becomes consumed with religious and national fervor, the effects of which ultimately cause a devastating global war. Set in the mid-twentieth century, The Absolute at Large questions the ethics and rampant spread of power, mass production, and atomic weapons that Karel Capek saw in the technological and political revolutions occurring around him. Stephen Baxter provides an introduction for this Bison Books edition. (20110421)
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(Playful and provocative, irreverent and inspiring, Capek ...)
Playful and provocative, irreverent and inspiring, Capek is perhaps the best-loved Czech writer of all time. Novelist and playwright, famed for inventing the word 'robot' in his play RUR, Capek was a vital part of the burgeoning artistic scene of Czechoslovakia of the 1920s and 30s. But it is in his journalism - his brief, sparky and delightful columns - that Capek can be found at his most succinct, direct and appealing. This selection of Capek's writing, translated into English for the first time, contains his essential ideas. The pieces are animated by his passion for the ordinary and the everyday - from laundry to toothache, from cats to cleaning windows - his love of language, his lyrical observations of the world and above all his humanism, his belief in people. His letters to his wife Olga, also published here, are extraordinarily moving and beautifully distinct from his other writings. Uplifting, enjoyable and endlessly wise, Believe in People is a collection to treasure.
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(From the internationally acclaimed Czech writer Karel Cap...)
From the internationally acclaimed Czech writer Karel Capek comes this beautifully written and marvelously apt account of the trials and tribulations of the gardenerâ??s life. First published in Prague in 1929, The Gardenerâ??s Year combines a richly comic portrait of life in the garden, narrated month by month, with a series of delightful illustrations by the authorâ??s older brother and collaborator, Josef. Capekâ??s gardenersâ??all too human, despite their lofty aspirationsâ??often look the fool, whether they be found sopping wet, victims of the cobralike water hose, or hunched over, hands immersed in the soil, â??presenting their rumps to the splendid azure sky.â? In their repeated folly, Capek gives us not only cause for laughter but also, in the end, â??testimony of the imperishable and miraculous optimism of the human race.â? This Modern Library edition is published with a new Introduction by Verlyn Klinkenborg, a New York Times editorialist and the author of Making Hay and The Last Fine Time.
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( This trilogy of novels was the culmination of Karel Cap...)
This trilogy of novels was the culmination of Karel Capek's career. The novels share neither characters nor events; instead, they approach the problem of knowing peopleof mutual understandingin a variety of ways. Detectives faced with a murder reconstruct the crime, but not the character of the man who was murdered. 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. Together, these three short novels form a readable philosophical novel unique in world literature.
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( The stories in this collection tackle great events and ...)
The stories in this collection tackle great events and figures of history, myth, and literature in unexpected ways, questioning views on such basic concepts as justice, progress, wisdom, belief, and patriotism.
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dramatist journalist novelist author
Born in northeastern Bohemia on January 9, 1890, Karel Capek was the son of a physician.
He studied philosophy at the Czech University of Prague, where he was influenced in his thinking by Henri Bergson and by modern American philosophy. In 1914 he earned a doctorate.
Capek's first creative phase (1908 - 1921) was marked by close collaboration with his brother, Joseph, who later became a distinguished painter. This period in his writing career culminated in two collections of short stories. The central motif of Wayside Crosses (1917) is the mechanism of modern civilization - "Everything that we touch becomes a tool. Even man. " The second collection, Painful Stories (1921; Eng. trans. Money and Other Stories), deals with middle-class life. It is no accident that the decisive role in almost all the stories is played by money. The characters in these books are, for the most part, helpless victims of forces that have overwhelmed them. In his second phase (1921 - 1932) Capek emerged as a dramatist, novelist, journalist, and writer of travel sketches. Some of his comedies as well as his novels from this period are utopian. Best known, especially to American theatergoers, is his visionary play R. U. R. (1920), a sharp criticism of capitalism which introduced the word "robot" into the English language. Another comedy of this period, portraying the postwar situation in the world, is the ballet or revue From the Insect World (1921), written in collaboration with his brother and translated into English as The World We Live In. During this period Capek also became prominent as an essayist. His deep humanity and his belief in ordinary man were expressed in an enjoyable book of humorous sketches, Gardener's Year (1922). Best known, however, and widely translated were his popular travel books on England, Italy, Spain, Holland, and Scandinavia. In the collection entitled Fairy Tales (1931), a veritable treasure-house of pure storytelling, Capek revealed his sincere understanding of childhood, his sense of humor, and the light touch characteristic of his fiction during the middle period. His third and final creative phase (1932 - 1938) was marked by his highest achievement: a philosophical trilogy of distinguished novels which first appeared in serial form in newspapers between 1932 and 1934. The novels-Hordubal, Meteor, and An Ordinary Life-center on the problems of truth and reality. Capek tells the same story from three different points of view, and in this respect he is sometimes compared to such masters of perspective in modern fiction as Henry James and Joseph Conrad. Between 1934 and 1938 Capek wrote a biography of Tomás Masaryk, founder and first president of Czechoslovakia, told as far as possible in Masaryk's own words. The first two volumes of this popular work were translated into English as President Masaryk Tells His Story (1934) and Masaryk's Thought and Life (1938). Capek proved to be a bitter foe of dictatorship, attacking it forcefully in his last works written for the stage: Power and Glory (1937; Eng. trans. The White Scourge ) and his last play, The Mother, written under the impact of the Spanish Civil War and the threat of Hitler against Capek's own country. A few weeks after the occupation of Czechoslovakia, Capek died in Prague on December 25, 1938.
(A visionary work of science fiction that introduced the w...)
( The stories in this collection tackle great events and ...)
(From the internationally acclaimed Czech writer Karel Cap...)
( In this satirical classic, a brilliant scientist invent...)
(Playful and provocative, irreverent and inspiring, Capek ...)
( This trilogy of novels was the culmination of Karel Cap...)
He campaigned in favor of free expression and utterly despised the rise of both fascism and communism in Europe.
He became a member of International PEN and established, and was the first president of, the Czechoslovak PEN Club.
In 1935 Karel Capek married actress Olga Scheinpflugová, after a long acquaintance.