The Swell Season

Josef Škvorecký

Totem Press

The Cowards (Penguin International Writers)

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Penguin Books, Ltd.

"So entertaining that it would be dangerous to read it without laughing aloud."—Los Angeles Times Book ReviewThe 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. As adventuresome, episodic, bawdy, comic, and literary as any novel written in the past twenty-five years, The Engineer of Human Souls is worthy of the subtitle Skvorecky gave it: "An Entertainment on the Old Themes of Life, Women, Fate, Dreams, The Working Class, Secret Agents, Love and Death."

The Engineer of Human Souls

Contemporary

Picador

Miss Silver's Past

Vintage/Ebury (A Division of Random House Group)

One of the most celebrated writers of our time, Josef Škvorecký has been internationally honored for his passion, wry humor, insight into human and political frailty, and breathtaking style. When Eve Was Naked is Škvorecký's autobiography told in stories. Collected here in a chronological sweep, they take the reader through the stages of a most remarkable life, and bear witness to some of the twentieth century's most eventful and tragic times -- from the innocence of prewar Prague through the horrors of the Nazi occupation and World War II. Many of these are narrated by the tenderhearted cynic Danny Smiricky. In the title story, "Eve Was Naked," seven-year-old Danny falls in love for the first time; at sixteen he hides in a railway station and watches as his Jewish teacher is herded onto a train and taken away. In 1968, as Russian tanks rolled into Prague, Skvorecky fled Czechoslovakia, taking Danny with him. In the collection's final stories Danny begins his tenure as Professor Smiricky at Edenvale -- a Canadian university -- and attempts to come to terms with the politically innocent and self-centered youth that flock to his courses. Masterfully written, humorous, and wise, When Eve Was Naked is a remarkably revealing work of fiction.

When Eve Was Naked: A Journey Through Life

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

As Danny Smiricky, a Czech writer who fled his country in 1968 to find asylum at a university in Toronto, adjusts to life in the New World, his memories of his homeland and his lost youth haunt him

KNOPF

Mournful Demeanor of Lieutenant Boru

Short Stories & Anthologies

Faber and Faber

The End of Lieutenant Boruvka

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Faber Paperbacks

Depicts the thoughts and aspirations of a group of Czech students during the last week of World War II

Cowards

From the widely acclaimed author of Dvorak in Love and The Engineer of Human Souls comes an unusual Civil War novel based on the documented memories of Czech soldiers who fought for the Union in the 26th Wisconsin battalion under General William Tecumseh Sherman.

The Bride of Texas

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Books by Josef Škvorecký