War with the Newts
By Karel Čapek
4.5/5
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About this ebook
Karel Čapek
Karel Capek was born in 1890 in Czechoslovakia. He was interested in visual art as a teenager and studied philosophy and aesthetics in Prague. During WWI he was exempt from military service because of spinal problems and became a journalist. He campaigned against the rise of communism and in the 1930s his writing became increasingly anti-fascist. He started writing fiction with his brother Josef, a successful painter, and went on to publish science-fiction novels, for which he is best known, as well as detective stories, plays and a singular book on gardening, The Gardener’s Year. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature several times and the Czech PEN Club created a literary award in his name. He died of pneumonia in 1938.
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Reviews for War with the Newts
12 ratings9 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5There are already many excellent reviews of this novel, so it is only necessary to make a few points. Although written in 1936 it has a startlingly fresh modern air. Partly because Capek's fantasy of a race of intelligent amphibians taking over the world is timeless, and partly because Capek uses colloquial language so deftly. The comparison that stands out head and shoulders is Jaroslav Hasek's 'Good Soldier Svejk'. There's the same sense of hearing a story told first hand by an engaging stranger in a pub or cafe - too absurd to be believed, but then perhaps so extraordinary it must be true. I'm also reminded of Hasek's (brief) career writing articles for a nature journal in 1909. Having quickly exhausted the limited repertoire of animals he knew anything about, he started inventing them, and was only exposed after considerable public astonishment. Hasek died in 1923, but I rather think he would have been very pleased with Capek's newts. And yes there are political overtones, given Capek's absolute opposition to the rise of Nazi Germany on his doorstep, but really it seems to me to be a story directed against militarism of any kind, as Orwell's 'Animal Farm' tackled tyranny in later years. Very highly recommended.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Say what you will, the Newts have brought enormous progress to the world, as well as an idea called Quantity. 'We people of the Newt Age,' is a phrase uttered with justified pride; good heavens, how can you compare us with that outmoded Human Age with its ponderous, finicky and useless fuss that went by the name of culture, the arts, pure science, and what have you! Real, self-assured Newt Age people will no longer waste their time meditating on the Essence of Things; they will be concerned solely with numbers and mass production.It all starts when some pacific islanders warn a Czech sea captain against going to Devil Bay in his search for pearls. What he finds there is a group of enormous newts that can walk on their hind-legs and seem strangely intelligent. He gives them knives to defend themselves against sharks in return for bringing him pearl oysters, and then starts shipping them to other islands to dive for oysters there.From this small beginning, the newts that were originally found on just one atoll, gradually colonise the coastlines of the world, as first businessmen and then governments find them useful for underwater building, dredging harbours and defending their coasts. But the newts are much more intellgent than originally thought, and as one female can produce 100 young each year, the situation is unlikely to stay stable for long. A 1930s satire on politics, slavery, science and much more, by the author who first invented the robot. Very good indeed!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a very dark satire of the political and ecological situation in the Czech republic before WWII. A colony of newts is discovered, newts that can not only learn to talk, but also to use tools. As mankind discovers their abilities, they start to exploit the new found species. These animals can do work humans can't and they can fight our wars for us. But of course all goes wrong and the newts, lead by the Great Salamander (Hitler?) starting to take over, the consequences of the actions nearly destroy the world. This story is wonderful. Dark, humorous, absurd and brilliant and end s with a dialogue between the author and himself about a possibly better ending (or not) which in itself is a fantastic bit of writing. The political events in the years leading up to the writing of the novel (it was published in 1936) do shine through the fiction as a dark foretelling of a future. This book is a very good mirror of the society in Europe as it was then but it's also a amazing story, full of colour and beautiful prose.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is the English translation of the Czech original Válka s Mloky, one of the best known works by Čapek, arguably the greatest Czech author of the first half of the 20th Century. This book is one of the great dystopias of 20th Century's literature. A new species of giant and intelligent newts is discovered in Southeast Asia and their intelligence and working capacities are exploited more and more heavily by the humans. Their economic and military importance is slowly built up by small and unrelated steps until the survival of human civilization and the very existence of earth's continents are in jeopardy. An hilarious critique of human civilization and the greed and disregard for consequences inherent in much of our decisions.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Out-friggin'-standing! Literature, sci-fi, satire, philosophy -- call it what you will, but Capek -- writing in the mid-1930's during Hitler's rise to power -- gives us a very funny, very scary sendup of humanity. Cross Solzhenitsyn with Twain... with Vonnegut and perhaps a grade B sci-fi flick and you get this brilliant work!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Brilliant satire, it was a shame I couldn't find this book in a Barnes and Noble! Quite arguably "the" classic science fiction writer. Invented the term robot! Although not used in this novel, the "newts" might as well be. There is so much satire in this work, it literally blew my mind. Back to back laughs at humanity, politics, religion, capitalism, the list goes on. At some points he is so right on it makes you cringe. Some very prophetic criticisms on Nazis and racial intolerance.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dark, funny satire. I haven't read any other Czech fiction, so I don't know if those are typical traits of their sf and fantasy, but I'm certainly looking forward to picking up Čapek's best known work, R.U.R..In many ways, the newts might as well be robots (a word that Čapek himself invented). For most of the novel they are perfectly content to work, without much fuss or complaint, at any job presented to them. They take all abuse and violence against them in stride, as calmly as a little green anole will drop his tail when escaping a cat. It's man's inhumanity that is brought into sharp focus in the passages describing the various brutal experiments practiced upon the salamanders, not the creatures' worth as sentient beings.I don't know about other countries or regions, but here in the American south we are carefully taught in school about the evils of the slave trade, of the way African people were crammed into ships and allowed to rot and die all the way across the ocean, as long as the bottom line was not too affected by the loss of profit. So when Čapek tells of the newts transported in dirty, sickening water tanks (or even worse, sealed into tin barrels) after being kidnapped from their homes, the comparison is obvious. But for all that, he writes well enough that the symbolism never feels forced - if it is slightly heavy handed, I can overlook that because it still gave me a punch in the gut. When the slave traders pull off a salamander's leg or arm and just shrug and assure the narrator that it will grow back anyway, so who cares?, it got to me enough that I sat the book down for a minute.So, there's the question that is wrestled with for most of the book - are they animals? automatons? fellow thinking beings? Do they have souls, or are they simply a resource to be sold in carefully grouped batches to the highest bidder? Is education and a decent life the best thing for them, as new members of a human society? Or is that what later leads to their victory in a war that sort of doesn't even happen?In the end, of course, we bring our downfall on ourselves. We breed them and seed them on every coastline in the world, we arm them and train them despite agreements and warnings to the contrary, we base an entire system of worldwide advancement upon them. And then they take over our airwaves and offer to buy the very land from us, with the comment that they're going to take it either way. Čapek, speaking directly to us in the final chapter, offers some little hope, but I'm pretty sure they won out in the end.final thought: I didn't even touch on all the references to nazis (the Master Newt Race), fascism, unchecked capitalism, environmental damage, and imperialism. In less deft hands, this would have been unreadable. I'm glad to have "discovered" Čapek.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I love this story...as true now as it was in early 20th century. It is about so much, but mostly about treating those who are deemed inferior as something less than human, which proves to be a fatal mistake, even when the creature is not human
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An almost forgotten classic, this book is enormously entertaining. The book can be read as "just" a very good, imaginative SF story but it is also chock full of satire and ultimately has a very simple but truthful message - people can be really, really stupid.