The Engineer of Human Souls (Czech Literature) - Softcover

Skvorecky, Josef; Wilson, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564781992 ISBN 13: 9781564781994

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 2009

Synopsis

The Engineer of Human Souls is a labyrinthine comic novel that investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, a Czech immigrant to Canada. As the novel begins, he is a professor of American literature at a college in Toronto. Out of touch with his young students, and hounded by the Czech secret police, Danny is let loose to roam between past and present, adopting whatever identity that he chooses or has been imposed upon him by History.

About this title

Review:

A deep pleasure to read.

Starred Review.This powerful, moving, yet often hilarious novel is an example of cultural meditation at its best.

Skvorecky is so much of a writer that the moment he puts pen to paper, he can't help being an artist.

What better check on general doctrine than the poet's and the novelist's 'small stories, ' the kind that Josef Skvorecky recounts with such verve and generosity.

A complex, challenging analysis of contemporary politics and society, The Engineer of Human Souls will become a milestone in the evolution of world literature.

Josef Skvorecky is unquestionably an important writer, blending a great humorous talent with a restless, sustained, probing moral inquisitiveness . . . The Engineer of Human Souls will certainly introduce the reader to the distinctive Skvorecky world.

[Skvorecky is] one of the major literary figures of our time . . . a novelist of the first rank . . . one of the masters of current Czech literature . . . His novels are sad, funny--and utterly gripping.

By turns comic or sad and bitter, Skvorecky's book is a marvelous exploration of the human condition.

Among its many other virtues, The Engineer of Human Souls is perhaps the funniest academic novel since Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man.

Starred Review. This powerful, moving, yet often hilarious novel is an example of cultural meditation at its best.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1564781992
• ISBN 13: 9781564781994
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 571