page_title: Karel Čapek
section_title: Writing
hierarchical_section_title: Karel Čapek / Writing
caption_attribution_description: English: Karel Čapek, manuscript Čeština: Karel Čapek, rukopis Deutsch: Karel Čapek, Handschrift
context_page_description: Karel Čapek was a Czech writer, playwright and critic. He has become best known for his science fiction, including his novel War with the Newts and play R.U.R., which introduced the word robot. He also wrote many politically charged works dealing with the social turmoil of his time. Influenced by American pragmatic liberalism, he campaigned in favor of free expression and strongly opposed the rise of both fascism and communism in Europe.
  Though nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times, Čapek never received it. However, several awards commemorate his name, such as the Karel Čapek Prize, awarded every other year by the Czech PEN Club for literary work that contributes to reinforcing or maintaining democratic and humanist values in society. He also played a key role in establishing the Czechoslovak PEN Club as a part of International PEN.
  Čapek died on the brink of World War II as the result of a lifelong medical condition,
  but his legacy as a literary figure became well established after the war.
context_section_description: Karel Čapek wrote on a wide variety of subjects. His works are known for their precise description of reality. Čapek is renowned for his work with the Czech language. He is known as a science fiction author, who wrote before science fiction became widely recognized as a separate genre. Many of his works also discuss ethical aspects of industrial inventions and processes already anticipated in the first half of the 20th century. These include mass production, nuclear weapons and intelligent artificial beings such as robots or androids. His most productive years were during The First Republic of Czechoslovakia (1918–1938).
  Čapek also expressed fear of social disasters, dictatorship, violence, human stupidity, the unlimited power of corporations, and greed.  Čapek tried to find hope, and the way out.
  From the 1930s onward, Čapek's work became increasingly anti-fascist, anti-militarist, and critical of what he saw as "irrationalism".
  Ivan Klíma, in his biography of Čapek, notes his influence on modern Czech literature, as well as on the development of Czech as a written language. Čapek, along with contemporaries like Jaroslav Hašek, spawned part of the early 20th-century revival in written Czech thanks to their decision to use the vernacular. Klíma writes, "It is thanks to Čapek that the written Czech language grew closer to the language people actually spoke".  Čapek was also a translator, and his translations of French poetry into the language inspired a new generation of Czech poets.
  His other books and plays include detective stories, novels, fairy tales and theatre plays, and even a book on gardening. His most important works attempt to resolve problems of epistemology, to answer the question: "What is knowledge?" Examples include Tales from Two Pockets, and the first book of the trilogy of novels Hordubal, Meteor, and An Ordinary Life. He also co-wrote (with his brother Josef) the libretto for Zdeněk Folprecht's opera Lásky hra osudná in 1922.
  After World War II, Čapek's work was only reluctantly accepted by the communist government of Czechoslovakia, because during his life he had refused to accept communism as a viable alternative. He was the first in a series of influential non-Marxist intellectuals who wrote a newspaper essay in a series called "Why I am not a Communist".
  In 2009 (70 years after his death), a book was published containing extensive correspondence by Karel Čapek, in which the writer discusses the subjects of pacifism and his conscientious objection to military service with lawyer Jindřich Groag from Brno. Until then, only a portion of these letters were known.
  Arthur Miller wrote in 1990: 
  I read Karel Čapek for the first time when I was a college student long
  ago in the Thirties. There was no writer like him...prophetic assurance mixed with surrealistic humour and hard-edged social satire: a unique combination...he is a joy to read.
caption: Karel Čapek's handwriting
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