War With the Newts - Softcover

Capek, Karel

4.16

14,365 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425031683 ISBN 13: 9780425031681

Publisher: Berkley, 1976

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Perhaps Capek's greatest novel, "War With the Newts" is both charming and frightening: a fantasy in which human history is gradually - but appallingly - altered by the discovery on a remote island of a race of highly intelligent salamanders.

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Review:

A great writer of the past who speaks to the present in a voice brilliant, clear, honourable, blackly funny and prophetic (Kurt Vonnegut)

His satire still packs a punch, and the storytelling is brilliant. (The Times)

This [series] is a wonderful idea ... They are absurdist parables, by turns hilarious, unsettling and enigmatic. (Nicholas Lezard Guardian)

[The series] sheds remarkable light on the literature, culture and politics of the region...anyone coming fresh to the field will be captivated by the richness, variety, humour and pathos of a classic literature that, through a shared historical experience, transcends national and linguistic boundaries. (CJ Sch�ler Independent on Sunday)

I urge you to go and read them. (Adam Thirlwell New Statesman)

This new series of Central European Classics is important well beyond simply providing 'good reads'. (Stephen Vizinczey Daily Telegraph)

From the Back Cover:

Originally written in 1936, two years before Capek's death and three years before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, War with the Newts is considered by many to be Capek's greatest book. Working in the "fantastic" satiric tradition of Wells, Orwell, and Vonnegut, Capek chronicles the discovery of a colony of highly intelligent giant salamanders off the coast of an Indonesian island. Capek sardonically details all the reactions of the civilized world - from horror to skepticism, from intellectual fascination to mercantile opportunism - and the ultimate destruction from which it (and the newts) might not escape.

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