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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
As the publisher of the English translation this book, I'd like to explain its origins, so that it can be better understood. Capek wrote these 47 stories over the period of a year, one nearly each week, for a newspaper. They started out as fun stories, but soon turned into a unique project, the equivalent of drawings for his masterpiece, Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, An Ordinary Life.The other thing Capek was doing was writing detective stories each of which breaks at least one of the rules of a mystery. For example, the murderer is clear from the beginning, or no murder was committed. Some are not about murder at all, but about aspects of the detective story, such as justice.My favorite story, "Footprints," is about the mystery of mystery, and how mystery relates to murder. What is especially amazing about this is that there was no mystery genre in Czech yet (the stories were written in 1929). But Capek was a big fan of British detective stories, especially Chesterton.Capek was a cubist writer. Therefore, this book is all about points of view, multiple points of view and odd points of view, as is Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, An Ordinary Life.I hope this helps readers appreciate the author's achievement and the place of this book in his oeuvre.