The engineer of human souls

Josef Škvorecký

Dalkey Archive Press, 1999 - Fiction - 571 pages

The Engineer of Human Souls is a labyrinthine comic novelthat investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, aCzech immigrant to Canada. As the novel begins, he is a professor ofAmerican literature at a college in Toronto. Out of touch with his youngstudents, and hounded by the Czech secret police, Danny is let loose toroam between past and present, adopting whatever identity that hechooses or has been imposed upon him by History. Asadventuresome, episodic, bawdy, comic, and literary as any novel writtenin the past twenty-five years, The Engineer of Human Souls isworthy of the subtitle Skvorecky gave it: "An Entertainment on the OldThemes of Life, Women, Fate, Dreams, The Working Class, Secret Agents,Love and Death."

What people are saying

Review: The Engineer of Human Souls (Danny Smiřický)

User Review  - Bruce - Goodreads

This book disappointed me. I probably went in with too high expectations, given the bombastic language from the reviewers plastered all over the cover, suggesting that it was one of the best novels of ...

Review: The Engineer of Human Souls (Danny Smiřický)

User Review  - [P] - Goodreads

The human mind is like a snow globe, that, when shaken, scatters [like those synthetic flakes] once dormant thoughts and emotions, making them dance and swirl [which, of course, draws your attention ...

Contents

• CHAPTER ONE P06: 3
• CHAPTER THREE Twain: 129
• CHAPTER FOUR Crane: 211
• CHAPTER FIVE FitZgetald: 277
• CHAPTER SIX COnrad: 365
• CHAPTER SEVEN LOVCCraft: 485

About the author

One of the foremost Czech writers of the postwar generation, Skvorecky is the author of five novels and many filmscripts and the translator into Czech of William Faulkner (see Vol. 1), Ernest Hemingway (see Vol. 1), and Dashiell Hammett (see Vol. 1). His first novel, The Cowards (1958), took an unorthodox look at the events of May 1945 when Czechoslovakia was liberated from the Nazis. The novel was, in its author's words, a succes scandale. In spite of a ban by the party, The Cowards circulated underground and exerted a powerful influence on young Czech writers before the political thaw set in. Miss Silver's Past was the last of his books to appear in Czechoslovakia, where it was published in 1969. The Tank Corps, which should have appeared the same year, was banned. Skvorecky left Czechoslovakia in 1968 and now teaches at the University of Toronto.He also publishes books of Czech emigre writers. In 1980 he received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The engineer of human souls; Czech Literature Series
• Author: Josef Škvorecký
• Translated by: Paul Robert Wilson
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 1999
• ISBN: 1564781992, 9781564781994
• Length: 571 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General