Author Background (alphabetical order)

Capek (1890-1938)

Karel Capek might be described as the "conscience of the First (Czechoslovak) Republic" (1918-1938), as his work expressed a non-political, but philosophical view of life. Best known for creating the word "robot" in his play R. U. R. and his anti-Nazi satire The War With the Newts, Capek led the host of writers and other intellectuals who met weekly with President Thomas Masaryk, the so-called Friday Circle. (Imagine any of our recent Presidents doing the same!) His trilogy of Hordubal, Meteor, and An Ordinary Life, however, represents his greatest philosophical and literary achievement.

Esterházy (1950- present)

Péter Esterházy was probably the most renowned Hungarian novelist of the modern era. He started off his career as a mathematics scholar, comes from one of the great aristocratic families of Europe -- a fact which did not endear him to the erstwhile Communist leaders of Hungary. He was increasingly drawn to literature and has established a solid international reputation as a writer. Including his work in this course allows us to generalize the experience of Central Europe beyond that of the Czech Republic. In this respect, one view from outside the set provides us with an improved perspective on the writers within the set. In addition, Esterházy has written a book in homage to Hrabal, a Czech writer we will be covering this term. This work allows us to see the influence of Hrabal, as well as the unique literary style of Esterházy, who claims to be writing in the style of Hrabal.

Grab (1903-1949)

Hermann Grab is an obscure German-Jewish Czech some of whose work is similar to Kafka's. Like Hostovsky, he was exiled to the U.S. by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. We include a short story, "The Taxi-driver," for comparative reading.

Hostovsky (1908- 1973)

During my search for a writer in the kafkan tradition, friends would suggest those they believed penned similar fiction or wrote in like styles. No suggestion, however, provided the same wonderful combination of paranoia, absurdity, and hopelessness of the K. man.
Finally, I read The Arsonist for which Egon Hostovsky had won a state literary prize in 1936, purchased on a visit to Prague. I found that this was perhaps the end of my quest. Further investigation revealed that he had been a moderately successful author in America during the 40's and 50's, whose books were now sadly long out of print. It is my own personal opinion that Hostovsky's work is more readable than Kafka's since it centers on historical fiction such as World War II or Cold War spies rather than such esoteric themes as a man-insect or a flying coal buyer. Oh, well!
Hostovsky, an assimilated Jew like Kafka, wrote not in German but in Czech, and unlike his predecessor was raised in a small border town (Hronov) in the Sudetenland. His first of two sojourns began in March 1939 while accepting a literary prize in Belgium as the Nazis goose-stepped into his homeland. He made his way to the U.S. during the war and continued to write. Upon returning to Czechoslovakia at war's end, Hostovsky was again exiled when the communists banned his books. His works during this later period reflect the experiences of a lonely outsider cast in literary form as a Czech exile searching for unattainable goals. I shall discuss my personal relationship with Hostovsky's daughter and shall provide more details of the author's life. (Neal Orkin)

Hrabal (1914-1997)

Bohumil Hrabal was the irascible, beer drinking, master storyteller who held court each evening at The Golden Tiger pub in Prague. His literary subjects were the downtrodden, lower class waiters, trash compacters, or trainmen who found happiness in their station in life in magical Prague. His books were welcomed by a society fed with the drivel of communist socialist realism glorifying female tractor drivers, anti-Nazi war heroes, or productive and cheerful factory workers. Hrabal used these same antiheroes but portrayed their lives much more simply. Thus, the waiter becomes a capitalist millionaire, the trash compacter an avid and literate book collector, and the trainman a partisan without socialist deification. Hrabal tragically died by falling from his fifth floor hospital window while feeding pigeons, a prophetic fear he had expressed in his writings.

Kafka (1883-1924)

An assimilated German speaking Jew from Prague, Franz Kafka was perhaps the first author to view an absurd world through his nightmarish writings. The eponymous term, "Kafkaesque," presents a senseless, menacing condition from which no escape is possible. We shall expand this simple definition throughout the course. Although engaged three times (twice to the same person), Kafka never married, but found love with two very different women - Milena Jesenska, a Czech gentile feminist and Dora Dyment, a much younger, devoted orthodox Jew who shared the last years of his life before Kafka died of tuberculosis at forty. More information on Kafka can be gleaned from the videos and from Introducing Kafka.