Capek's Last Novel

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 131, 26 December 1941, Page 5

Capek's Last Novel

HAVE been reading the last novel written by Karel Capek, the widely-known Czechoslovakian writer, It is the work upon which he was engaged when he died; died of a broken heart, it is said, because of the destruction of the great republic with which his name is so closely linked, Capek has been almost the only writer of Czechoslovakia who has succeeded in. gaining a world-wide reputation. The part he played in the development of the national theatre, the satiric plays he wrote upon the problems of the industrial and mechanised world in which we live, his close connection with liberal and democratic movements, all helped to make him a world figure symbolising some of the best characteristics of his time and country. It is perhaps a little disconcerting that the novel he was writing at the time of his death has little to do with politics or internati -7l events. It is the biography of a musician or a musical pretender, and Capek was attempting to write the story of ‘his life and character as seen and interpreted by a number of his close associates, his boyhood companion, his first love, his room-mate in his university days, his wife, and the professors and musicians with whom he had dealings. The fact that the book remains unfinished’ doesn’t matter very much, because Capek’s wife has added a short chapter in which she tells how he proposed to complete his novel.-(Book review, by, Winston Rhodes, 3YA, November 25.)