Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Capek Reader

It's great to see Capek's work is still read in other languages. This book is a good mix of his writings along with helpful comments about the works as well as the author himself. It's a bit strange to read it in English after having read it in Czech first, but I still think that even the translated works give the reader a good flavor of Capek's work, his thoughts and literary genius. The book is a sampler of Capek's work... Read Full Review

This book is a compillation of some of the greatest works by the brilliant Czech writer Karel Capek. Here there are some of his best-known plays and a selection of tales which can be found entirely and unabridged in "Crossroads" and "Tales from Two Pockets". The plays included are "RUR" (Rossum's Universal Robots), "The Makropulos Secret", Act II of "The Insect Play" and "The Mother"."RUR" is a comical though moving to thought... Read Full Review

Karel Capek may have won the 1936 Nobel Prize in literature, were it not for his implicitly and at often times explicitly anti-totalitarian views. It is an unspoken truth that the Swedish Nobel Academy feared Hitler's growing regime as much as anybody in Europe... Instead, Mr. Capek died a heartbroken man in 1938, a few months after Britain's Chamberlain handed the writer's beloved Czechoslovakia over to Hitler, in exchange... Read Full Review

I found this book (along with other Capek masterpieces) while casually browsing in a Prague bookstore. In short, this book is for anyone who may have heard of Karel Capek and wants to know what exactly makes his fans so captivated about this sadly underrated writer. Containing the full Makropoulos Affair and RUR (the Robot play) scripts as well as numerous shorter articles, stories and anecdotes that leaves one thirsting... Read Full Review