∎ Download Free Engineer of Human Souls Czech Literature Josef Skvorecky Paul Wilson 9781564781994 Books

Engineer of Human Souls Czech Literature Josef Skvorecky Paul Wilson 9781564781994 Books

Download As PDF : Engineer of Human Souls Czech Literature Josef Skvorecky Paul Wilson 9781564781994 Books

Engineer of Human Souls Czech Literature Josef Skvorecky Paul Wilson 9781564781994 Books

This novel is constructed as a polyphonic delivery of hundreds of relatively short scenes. It is more like (endless?) story-telling than a novel. It has great insights into history and a tragicomical aspect that is brilliant and actually memorable. I gather that prior to reading this book readers need to have some knowledge about the historical and political issues of the time and the place, otherwise the novel will be challenging to get through. Its length is a little bit much to handle. I loved the first few chapters but around page 300 I realized that this will continue pretty much at the same level of delivery for another 200 pages...But it is worth the effort because there is plenty brilliant moments and amazingly funny and insightful characters everywhere. I am looking forward to reading more of this author. He deserves more recognition in the US.


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Engineer of Human Souls Czech Literature Josef Skvorecky Paul Wilson 9781564781994 Books Reviews

a worthless piece of s***!!!!!
If you want to understand the complexities of Eastern-Mittle European reality post-WWII and if you want to understand the life of Comunist era refugees in Western countries, read this book! Better than the anti-comunist livor of Solgenitsyin, funny, compassionate and true.
Quite an amazing book. I picked it up after seeing it on a book list of top influential books in Prague. I guess it is popular in its original Czech language. The main character being a Canadian from the then communist, totalitarian regime - was quite an experience for myself, and gave me some insight on how the other half lived ... the fact was like a fairy tale, and the fiction was such truth.
I first read "Engineer of Human Souls" in 1984. Every few years I start to miss Danny and Nadia, and then I know it's time to re-read it. Sometimes I jump into the story again partway through. Every time the characters seem a little different, as my own life experiences change my understanding of them.

One of Skvorecky's universal themes in this novel is how one can live as an exile, a theme Shakespeare also used (The Tempest, The Winter's Tale). Aren't we all exiles in some sense, from our parents' home, from our childhood playmates, from a hometown somewhere? Another theme is how a person should resist against the wrongs of a government (Nazis, Communists). There is plenty in this book to make the reader laugh, cry, and think.
This novel written before the Velvet Revolution that finally toppled the Communists from Czechoslovakia, swings back and forth in time from the days of Nazi occupation during World War II, to the early 1980s. We follow the life of Danny, a writer exiled to a sterile academic life in Canada, from his teenage days to his mid-fifties.

The action moves around in time kaleidoscopically through letters from friends spread around the world, vignettes, scenes from the past and present and the musings of the protagonist who lives mostly in his memories. The book is often comic in a Mittel-Europa kind of way -- which means you're not sure whether you're supposed to laugh or cry.

The novel's greatest strength is the way it captures the futile life of the exile. The Czech community in Toronto comprises exiles who fled fascism in the 1930s and early 1940s, those who escaped Communism in the 1940s and 1950s and the ones who got out after the Prague Spring of 1968. These different groups, with their petty, inbred concerns, their endless homesickness and longing, are a template for the dilemma of all political exiles.

There are also heartbreaking scenes -- the death of Danny's first lover of tuberculosis, the suffering of his Jewish friend who survives Auschwitz and reaches Israel only to lose her son and grandchild in a terrorist attack.

My main problem is the book is simply too long. I began to tire of it -- and thought the author was beginning to repeat himself quite a way before the end. He evidently threw his heart and soul into it and much of it is loosely autobiographic no doubt. It remains a valuable document from a lost time.
Perfect
Better than Milan Kundera, this is a great novel. It may seem a little dated, as we are all tired of the alienated college professor rap(they write what they know). However the journey back to the war really are moving, and I do reccomend this book.
This novel is constructed as a polyphonic delivery of hundreds of relatively short scenes. It is more like (endless?) story-telling than a novel. It has great insights into history and a tragicomical aspect that is brilliant and actually memorable. I gather that prior to reading this book readers need to have some knowledge about the historical and political issues of the time and the place, otherwise the novel will be challenging to get through. Its length is a little bit much to handle. I loved the first few chapters but around page 300 I realized that this will continue pretty much at the same level of delivery for another 200 pages...But it is worth the effort because there is plenty brilliant moments and amazingly funny and insightful characters everywhere. I am looking forward to reading more of this author. He deserves more recognition in the US.