topics: |  fiction | czech

Excerpts

Newts start to speak

   'Look mummy'
   'Look, a newt,' came a voice behind [keeper Greggs]. 
   Mr. Greggs spun round; that black newt, that Andrias, was looking at him,
blinking its lower lids. 
   'Yuk, isn't it ugly?' the newt suddenly said.  'Let's go on, darling.'
   Mr. Greggs' mouth gaped in amazement.  'What's that?'
   'Does it bite?' the newt croaked. p.79
[the newt is repeating what it has heard repeatedly through the day.]

[about Povondra's zeal for collecting news articles on the Newts]
It is a well-known fact that all collectors are prepared to steal or do
murder for the sake of acquiring a new piece for their collection; but this
does not in any way reflect on their moral character. 119

Mrs. Povondra knew that every man was partly a nutcase and partly a little
boy. 119

colonial discourse: 
If those salamanders weren't so terribly mediocre... Yes they are mor or less
educated -- but that makes them even more blinkered because they have
acquired from human civilisation only that which is mediocre and utilitatian
- mechanical and repeatable.  205

--- blurb
The visionary Czech writer Karel Capek (1890-1938), one of the
century's great authors, first gained fame during the 1920s and 1930s when
his short stories, novels, satires, journalism, children's books, and plays
made him the most important writer in his native country. War With the Newts,
one of the great dystopian satires of the century, is about the discovery by
a Dutch sea-captain of a race of giant, intelligent, talking, and walking
newts. When humans begin to exploit the newts as slaves, the creatures
organize to fight the oppression, taking up arms and challenging the humans
for control of newt destiny and freedom.