"Puutarhurisihminen on syntynyt varmasti jalostuksen eikä luonnollisen kehityksen tuloksena. Jos hän olisi syntynyt luonnostaan, hän olisi toisennäköinen; hänellä olisi kovakuoriaisen jalat, jotta hänen ei tarvitsisi kyykkiä, ja siivet toisaalta koristeeksi, toisaalta siksi, että hän vois[...]
R.U.R.--written in 1920, premiered in Prague in 1921, and first performed in New York in 1922--garnered worldwide acclaim for its author and popularized the word robot. Mass-produced as efficient laborers to serve man, Capek's Robots are an android product--they remember everything but think of noth[...]
"War with the Newts (1936)" is Karel Capek's darkly humorous allegory of early twentieth-century Czech politics. Captain van Toch discovers a colony of newts in Sumatra which can not only be taught to trade and use tools, but also to speak. As the rest of the world learns of the creatures and their [...]
From the internationally acclaimed Czech writer Karel Capek comes this beautifully written and marvelously apt account of the trials and tribulations of the gardener?s life. First published in Prague in 1929, The Gardener?s Year combines a richly comic portrait of life in the garden, narrated month [...]
Great play, that introduced the word "robot" into English, looks to a future in which all workers are automatons. They revolt when they acquire souls (i.e., when they gain the ability to hate) and the resulting catastrophe make for a powerful and deeply moving theatrical experience. Paul Selver tran[...]
Novelist and playwright, famed for inventing the word 'robot' in his play "RUR", Karel Capek was a vital part of the burgeoning artistic scene of Czechoslovakia of the 1920s and 30s. This title presents a selection of Capek's writing, containing his essential ideas.[...]
Written against the background of the rise of Nazism, War With the Newts concerns the discovery in the South Pacific of a sea-dwelling race, which is enslaved and exploited by mankind. In time they rebel, laying siege to the strongholds of their former masters in a global war for supremacy. R.U.R., [...]
It is seldom that a practical guide to gardening attains the level of a literary masterpiece, still more seldom that a book on gardening can amuse and instruct even those who have no garden to plant, nor the faintest interest in acquiring one The Gardener's Year is a characteristic product of Karel [...]
An inspiration to writers such as Orwell and Vonnegut, this is one of the great anti-utopian satires of the twentieth century and is now regarded as a modern classic.[...]
'I Had a Dog and a Cat' is a delightful book - suitable for both children and adults, translated by Marie and Robert Weatherall, and illustrated by Josef and Karel Capek. It is a comical tome, dealing in detail with our most beloved of pets, and was first published in 1940. The text and the Capek's [...]
Determined to liberate the mass-produced but highly intelligent robots forged in the machinery of Rossum's island factory, Helena Glory arrives in a blaze of righteousness. Soon perplexed by the robots' seeming humanity but absolute lack of sentience, she deserts her strident campaigning and falls i[...]
Karel Capek is the most important, most versatile, but also the most neglected Czech writer in the twentieth century. His plays RUR and "From the Life of Insects" created a sensation in London in the 1920s; his word robot was introduced into the Oxford English Dictionary while his other plays as wel[...]