Description: A pocket-sized gift edition of Karel Capek's The Gardener's Year, featuring black and white line drawings by the author's brother, Josef Capek.
Brief description: Karel Capek was born in 1890 in Czechoslovakia. He was interested in visual art as a teenager and studied philosophy and aesthetics in Prague. During WWI he was exempt from military service because of spinal problems and became a journalist. He campaigned against the rise of communism and in the 1930s his writing became increasingly anti-fascist. He started writing fiction with his brother Josef, a successful painter, and went on to publish science-fiction novels, for which he is best known, as well as detective stories, plays and a singular book on gardening, The Gardener's Year. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature several times and the Czech PEN Club created a literary award in his name. He died of pneumonia in 1938.
Review Quotes:
"A work of great charm and considerable subtlety which requires no more of the reader than a willingness to agree that it is a pleasant thing to own and cultivate a small patch of ground" --Literary Review
"This is a book no gardener should be without. This delightful little book is cram full of information, philosophy, and humour." --Sunday Times