Books and Online References From and About the Czech Lands

1. First Republic: 1918-1938
2. Nazi and Soviet Occupation Era: 1938 - 1989
3. After the Velvet Revolution: 1989 - now

• Most famous are R. U. R. and the The Insect Play. Both were Broadway hits in the Twenties.
  The Insect Play, written by both brothers, is a brilliant and funny fable about human folly, vanity, and greed.
  R.U.R. deals with a recurrent topic in Karel Capek's science fiction books: humanity's use and misuse of technology which, like the broom in the "Magician's Apprentice" story, can get out of control. Karel Capek coined the word 'robot' in this book. Capek's word was imported into English and given global usage by Asimov's science fiction. Eventually it named the new science of "robotics." Today, when "autonomous tanks" and "smart weapons" are quietly becoming reality, we find his play and message quite relevant.

  For a sampling of the Capeks, try this "reader." It contains a good selection from a number of Capek plays, novels, and stories as well as the complete text of "R.U.R" and "The Macropulos Secret" science fiction plays. "The Macropulos Secret," about immortality, became the libretto for Janacek's opera, "The Macropolous Case."

  Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Capek Reader

  The Capek brothers wrote charming stories which appeal to both children and adults. They are delightful to read aloud to your children. This one is good start:

  Nine Fairy Tales, and One More Thrown in for Good Measure

  Karel Capek was an avid gardener and his observations on this obsession will warm the heart of any fellow addict on a rainy or winter day:

  The Gardener's Year

  The wisdom, humanism, and humor for which Karel Capek is famous, shine in his irreverent take-offs on old legends, famous stories, and Biblical tales.
  If you really want to know what happened between Romeo and Juliet, before the press turned their romance into a media event, read

  Apocryphal Tales

  This collection of the best of Capek's "syndicated columns" provides portraits and insights into into the lives of ordinary people during the twenties and thirties. If you like Conan Doyle, you will be delighted by some of the criminal mysteries, often based on real cases, presented by this master of storytelling:

  Tales from Two Pockets

  Two Science Fiction Books with themes similar to R.U.R :

  War With the Newts

  The Absolute at Large

Literature During Foreign Occupation

The Czech Lands had only three years of freedom between 1938 and 1989. After England and France decided, at the infamous conference in Munich in 1938, to give Hitler parts of Czechoslovakia, he soon seized the entire country. After the Second World War, three years of freedom were followed by a Communist putsch in 1948 and by actual Soviet invasion and occupation in 1968.
• Vaclav Havel, author of absurdist plays, dissident, and prisoner, was elected president after the 1989 Velvet Revolution. Many of his plays were written before the invasion, while his political essays are representative of Soviet era in which most of the best writing in the Czech lands characteristically appeared as samizdat.
  The Garden Party and Other Plays

• Ivan Klima, in some respects a modern incarnation of Capek.
  Love and Garbage
  The 1st edition: 1991, sometimes still available : $6

  Other Authors: Kundera, Kohout, Vaculik, Hrabal,...

Literature after the Velvet Revolution

• Viewegh is one of the young new authors, first published after the revolution.
  Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia by Michal Viewegh, A.G. Brain (Translator)
  The central characters are the daughter of one of the "instant millionaires" created by the privatization of industry after the revolution, her American boyfriend, and the private tutor-narrator who is a teacher in the local high school in a small Bohemian town. The effects of the sudden influx of western influences and new freedom on old habits and human weaknesses are portrayed with irreverent wit by this talented new writer. Some of the humor in the original Czech is hard to convey and has been lost in translation, yet this is an amusing and thought-provoking portrait of life in the fledgling democracy.

• Radio Prague presents two amusing opinionated on-line versions of Czech history, a short and a long one, illustrated with children's drawings. This archived version from 1997 is a great overview!

• Recent History -- Velvet Revolution
  The fall of the Berlin Wall symbolized the fall of Communism all over Eastern Europe, but the transition of power to new elected governments had to be achieved country by country. In many countries it was violent. In Czechoslovakia, the transition was orchestrated from the Magic Lantern Theatre by playwright Vaclav Havel. It was referred to as the Velvet Revolution because of its non-violent character. Havel was later elected President.
  Two non-fiction works capture the transition to back to democracy with rare understanding and insight:
  • Exit into History, A Journey Through the New Eastern Europe
    by Eva Hoffman, Polish-born N.Y. Times Book Review editor.
  • The Magic Lantern, The Revolution of 89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague,
    by Timothy Garton Ash, has an excellent eyewitness description of the ten days of the Velvet Revolution in its Magic Lantern headquarters.

• Longer Histories

  The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History by Derek Sayer from Princeton University Press
  "Sayer shows that Bohemia has long been a theater of European conflict. It has been a cradle of Protestantism and a bulwark of the Counter-Reformation; an Austrian imperial province and a proudly Slavic national state; the most easterly democracy in Europe; and a westerly outlier of the Soviet bloc."

Other References

• The Prague Post Prague's English language weekly
• In Your Pocket Tourist guide online and in paper booklet form every 2 months
• List and links to Czech Republic papers

• Media
• Media in Europe - map
• Prague News (Internet)

Links to Czech Literature Sites

• Bohemica.com A good online bookstore
• Catbird Press Major publisher of Czech literature in translation
• Glascow University - Slavic Studies
• An Overview of Czech literature

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