Danny Smiricky is a Czech writer who fled his country in 1968 to find asylum in the sheltered world of Edenvale College in Toronto. His New World is an Eden that he sees with Old World eyes; he is touched and exasperated bt its political innocence, wryly amused by the hilarious counter-revolutionary schemes of his fellow emigres, tormented by the Soviet secret agents who dog his footsteps, and he succumbs to the determined flirtations of his prettiest student. At the same time he is undone by memories... of a homeland as lost to him as his youth... of Nadia, the factory girl who was hos first lover... of his career as girl-chaser and feckless hero of the Resistance in a small Bohemian village under the pall of the Nazi occupation, and later under Stalin... a world of heroes, traitors and innocents. --- from book's back cover

The Engineer of Human Souls

Literature & Fiction

Škvorecký, Josef

Contemporary

Harpercollins

The swell season: A text on the most important things in life

HarperCollins Canada / Cdn Adult Tp

Karl Leden works in the State publishing house in Prague. His work becomes complicated by the arrival of the Lenka Silver, and the reproaches of his ex-girlfriend, Vera. When a murder occurs, there are plenty of suspects - but the event is most definitely linked to Miss Silver's past.

Miss Silver's Past

TRAFALGAR SQUARE +

THE ENGINEER OF HUMAN SOULS spins its own story from the torn entrails of Central Europe. yet what emerges is comedy - clack, grimacing and explosively funny, as peculiarly middle European as the despairing wit of prague's own Franz Kafka' Time

Engineer of Human Souls

Random House of Canada, Limited

Six tales which trace the libidinous ardours of a young man in wartime Czechoslovakia. His fantasies obstinately refuse to become reality, and in a world of unyielding girls and ruthless Nazi invaders, jazz is his only solace. By the author of "The Bass Saxophone" and "The Engineer of Human Souls".

Swell Season

World Literature

RH Canada UK Dist

Two novellas ("The Bass Saxophone" and "Emoke") by a banned Czech writer who won the 1980 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the Canadian Governor General's 1985 Award for Fiction. The stories evoke the everyday nature of tyranny and the beleagurred individual's resistance to it.

Bass Saxophone

Literary

The Cowards

Penguin Modern Classics

The Cowards (King Penguin)

Genre Fiction

Penguin Books, Ltd.

In Josef Škvorecký's first novel written in English, the narrator lives in two radically dissimilar worlds: the exile world of the post-Communist Czech Republic where old feuds, treacherous betrayals, and friendships persevere; and the comfortable, albeit bland world of middle-class Canada. Murder intrudes upon both world. One features a young female sleuth, a college beauty queen, jealousy in the world of academia, and a neat conclusion. The other is a tragedy caused by evil social forces and philosophies, in which a web of lies insidiously entangles Sidonia, the narrator's wife. A brilliantly stylish tour de force in which the bright, sarcastic comedy of one tale sharply contrasts with the dark, elegiac bitterness of the other, Two Murders in My Double Life confirms Škvorecký's reputation as a versatile and engaging writer.

Two Murders in My Double Life: A Novel

British & Irish

Picador

This autobiography in stories, When Eve Was Naked, takes us through a most remarkable life, from the innocence of prewar Prague through the horrors of the Nazi occupation and World War II. In the title story, narrated by Skvorecky's alter-ego Danny Smiricky, 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; and in 1968, as Russian tanks rolled into Prague, Skvorecky flees Czechoslovakia, taking Danny with him. In the collection's final stories, Danny begins his tenure as Professor Smiricky at a Canadian university and attempts to come to terms with the politically innocent and self-centered youth that flock to his courses.

When Eve Was Naked: Stories of a Life's Journey

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