Karel Čapek

King Lear by William Shakespeare On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again by John Keats Student Matinee, Stratford by Margaret Stinson Caporushes by Flora Annie Steel King Lear in Respite Care by Margaret Atwood Nothing Shall Come of Nothing by Mairi MacInnes Wise Enough to Play the Fool by Isaac Asimov Send in the Clowns by Goenawan Mohamad Refrain by Mary Jo Salter Goneril by Karel Capek I Dream of Lear by Jerry W, Ward, Jr, The Blind lxading the Blind by Lisel Mueller A Dog, a Horse, a Rat by A.S. Byatt The Happy Ending Kmg Lear by Nahum Tate Why Lear Must Die by Victor Hugo Cordelia by Anna Jameson Calm After Storm by Frank Yerby Why King Lear Is the Cruellest Play by Frank Kermode

Unlike many other plays by Čapek, 'The White Plague' is pervaded not by hope with a little nihilism, but with anguish and fear for what the future would hold. Written in the late 1930s, shortly before the Munich Agreement delivered much of Czechoslovakia into Nazi control, 'The White Plague' tells the story of a dictatorship which is overcome by an illness it is powerless to control. It was first performed in 1937.

It's been a year and a half since the women of the Sisterhood received their presidential pardons, but the freedom they craved has come at a high price. The impossibly lucrative positions handed out to them by the mysterious Global Securities company have turned out to be golden handcuffs-scattering them around the world, cutting off communication, and leaving them in miserable isolation. But a happy homecoming at the old Virginia farmhouse is marred by the hijacking of Nikki and Kathryn's private jet. It seems their few fellow passengers are not ordinary travellers - they're an elite group of Interpol agents who urgently need the Sisterhood's help. Now the ladies face a stark choice: resume their vigilante status for one of their most hazardous assignments yet, or try to out wit a group of powerful adversaries willing to use truly desperate measures. This time, everything is in the balance-their lives, their friendship, and the freedom they fought so hard to gain.

Capek wrote 48 stories that deconstruct the mystery story by breaking one rule here, three rules there, and yet also make for wonderful reading. His unique approaches to the mysteries of justice and truth are full of the ordinary and the extraordinary, humor and humanism.

'The Insect Play' is an unconventional and much-celebrated satire which tells the story of myriad insects and the multi-layered and complex society which binds them; its comical allegory serves to illuminate the competing philosophies of life doing battle in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. It was first performed in Prague in 1922.

"Contains twenty-nine short sketches of famous characters."

The Czech writer Karel Čapek wrote his novel Továrna na absolutno in 1922. It was translated into English and published by Macmillan in 1927 as The Absolute at Large. The novel is a satirical piece of science fiction, and starts with the invention of an “atomic engine” in the future year 1943 which can convert matter directly into energy. Such engines can operate machinery for months from a single bucket of coal. But the inventor quickly discovers that his engine has an unfortunate side-effect: It generates pure divinity as a waste product. The consequences of the wide-spread adoption of the new engines therefore gives rise to unexpected complications in human society. The novel is full of sardonic but incisive comments on society, capitalism and religion.

Science fiction: before Christ and after 2001, an introduction / Ray Bradbury -- The gun without a bang / Robert Sheckley -- Crabs take over the island / Anatoly Dnieprov -- All watched over by machines of loving grace / Richard Brautigan -- EPICAC / Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -- R.U.R. / Karel Capek -- The human factor / David Ely -- The thinking machine / Isaac Asimov -- Misbegotten missionary / Isaac Asimov -- Elegy / Charles Beaumont -- Aesthetics of the moon / Jack Anderson -- Constant reader / Robert Bloch -- Who's there? / Arthur C. Clarke -- We'll never conquer space / Arthur C. Clarke -- The sack / William Morrison -- Mariana / Fritz Leiber -- I always do what Teddy says / Harry Harrison -- The man who could work miracles / H.G. Wells -- Echoes of the mind / Arthur Koestler -- The reluctant orchid / Arthur C. Clarke -- Founding father / Isaac Asimov -- The wound / Howard Fast -- The [sound machine]( / Roald Dahl -- Love among the cabbages / Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird -- Puppet show / Fredric Brown -- Random sample / T.P. Caravan -- On the wheel / Damon Knight -- Orbiter 5 shows how Earth looks from the moon / May Swenson -- The king of the beasts / Philip Jose Farmer -- UFO detective solves 'em all, well, almost / Philip J. Hilts -- The good provider / Marion Gross -- A sound of thunder / Ray Bradbury -- Who's cribbing? / Jack Lewis -- The third level / Jack Finney -- Speed / Josephine Miles -- The inn outside the world / Edmond Hamilton -- On the relativity of time / Wolfgang Pauli -- Relativity wins again -- A matter of overtime -- There will come soft rains / Ray Bradbury -- The forgotten enemy / Arthur C. Clarke -- Earthmen bearing gifts / Fredric Brown -- The lfth of Oofth / Walter Tevis -- Electronic tape found in a bottle / Olga Cabral -- Brace yourself for another ice age / Douglas Colligan -- The census takers / Frederik Pohl -- Disappearing act / Alfred Bester -- Bulletin / Shirley Jackson -- Autofac / Philip K. Dick -- Toward the space age / William Stafford -- Spaceship Earth / R. Buckminster Fuller -- Biographies of authors -- Science-fiction awards.

Written in 1936, two years before Capek's death and three years before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, War with the Newts is considered by many to be Capek's greatest book. Working in the "fantastic" satiric tradition of Wells, Orwell, and Vonnegut, Capek chronicles the discovery of a colony of highly intelligent giant salamanders off the coast of an Indonesian island. Capek sardonically details all the reactions of the civilized world - from horror to scepticism, from intellectual fascination to mercantile opportunism - and the ultimate destruction from which it (and the newts) might not escape.

LILLIAN CATS' PARADISE TOM QUARTZ MING'S BIGGEST PREY THE CHESHIRE CAT THE GARDEN OF STUBBORN CATS THE CAT THAT WALKED BY HIMSELF RHUBARB THE CYPRIAN CAT A CAT, A MAN, AND TWO WOMEN PUSS-IN-BOOTS MEHITABEL AND HER KITTENS CALVIN: A STUDY OF CHARACTER THE IMMORTAL CAT TOBERMORY GEORGE ELIOT: A MEDICAL STUDY [Black Cat]( THE BLACK AND WHITE DYNASTIES PIAZZA VITTORIO AN INCIDENT A BLACK AFFAIR SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT 1 AM A CAT THE CAT THAT WENT TO TRINITY THE AFFLICTIONS OF AN ENGLISH CAT QUIXOTE AND THE CATS MIDSHIPMAN, THE CAT TOTAL LOSS THE CAT THE STORY OF WEBSTER