Překlady českých autorů

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., or Rossum's Universal Robots, seen by many as a modern interpretation of the 'golem' myth, is regarded as the most important play in the history of SF. It introduced the word 'robot' and gave the genre one of its most enduring tropes.

Kundera whirls through comedy and tragedy towards his central question: how does a person, any person, live today? In constructing his answer, he writes of politics, sex, literature, modern man's alienation - and of their antidotes: laughter and forgetting.

The narrator of Ivan Klima's novel has temporarily abandoned his work-in-progress - an essay on Kafka - and exchanged his writer's pen for the orange vest of a Prague road-sweeper. As he works, he meditates on Czechoslovakia, on Kafka, on life, on art and, obsessively, on his passionate and adulterous love affair with the sculptress Daria. Gradually he admits the impossibility of being at once an honest writer and an honest lover, and with that agonizing discovery comes a moment of choice.

This breathtaking, reverberating survey of human nature finds Kundera still attempting to work out the meaning of life without losing his acute sense of humour. It is one of those great unclassifiable masterpieces that appear once every twenty years or so. 'It will make you cleverer, maybe even a better lover. Not many novels can do that.' Nicholas Lezard, GQ

Dear children and others, we are informing you that everything is in the best disorder, and so we are again meeting you in this next book from the Tales About a Doggie and a Pussycat, which is all about the two of us, written by the author Mr. Josef Čapek. We want to add to this that we are both very happy that he had portrayed us so nicely in his pictures. This new book about us is named How They Were Making a Cake, because once we really made such a big cake since as it happened we both had a name day and a birthday at the same time. However, it was also for the last time, because we found out that we should not overdo even a good thing; but we can’t reveal more because then you would easily guess how all of this ended. So have a good read and perhaps don’t show our recipe f

Dear children,

Josef Čapek, the writer, wrote for you the Tale About a doggie and a pussycat. For this Tale he also drew lots of very nice pictures. When he was writing and drawing all of this, little Alice was sitting on his lap. She was his daughter and he loved her very much, and little Alice loved her father. Because they were fond of each other like that, Mr. Čapek wrote and drew his story just like his Alice wished. Maybe she even suggested a bit what he should write and draw. However, we are not sure about that, we are just quessing. We would like to tell you that we are in good health and that we just began to be published as a serial for children. Now, as far as we know, you are going to be told in different books how we were washing the floor, how we made a cak

Dear children,

as you well know we both like you a lot and that is why we are writing you a letter today; it’s not long but it is important. You see, both of us, the doggie and the pussycat, we think that you like us a lot, and so we are writing to you because we want you to like all the doggies and pussycats in the whole wide world. That is why this book about us is called How They Wrote a Letter, because it is important that you not only find out what is written in this letter, but also what has been happening about that letter and in fact how all of this have happened. Writing such a letter is a hard work even for children, let alone for doggies and pussycats. However, you will find out all about it in a greater detail in this book, so we better not tell you too much

Contents: *Prince Bayaya *The Firebird and the clever vixen *Mahulena, the beautiful maiden *Sternberg *About a magic napkin, hat and shoes

"How I Came to Know Fish (1974)" is Ota Pavel's magical memoir of his childhood in Czechoslovakia. Fishing with his father and his Uncle Prosek - the two finest fishermen in the world - he takes a peaceful pleasure from the rivers and ponds of his country. But when the Nazis invade, his father and two older brothers are sent to concentration camps and Pavel must steal their confiscated fish back from under the noses of the SS to feed his family. With tales of his father's battle to provide for his family both in wealthy freedom and in terrifying persecution, this is one boy's passionate and affecting tale of life, love and fishing.

Prague has been one of the most significant towns of the European Judaism for many centuries. Apart from the Old-New Synagogue, the Pinklas Synagogue, the Old Jewish Cemetery and the Jewish Town Hall, there are the stories, myths and legends of the old, mysteriuos ghetto. The stories about the wise Rabbi Loew, the Golem and wealthy Mordecai Maisel aloow us to visualize the long lost world of the Jewish Prague.

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. Man discovers a species of giant, intelligent newts and learns to exploit them so successfully that they gain enough skills and arms to challenge man's place at the top of the animal kingdom.