The Achievement of Josef Skvorecky / Sam Solecki.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Solecki, Sam, Editor.

Series:

Heritage

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Škvorecký, Josef, 1924-2012.

Škvorecký, Josef.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 221 pages)

Place of Publication:

Toronto : University of Toronto Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The noted scholar and critic George Steiner has called the Czech-Canadian author Josef Skvorecky 'one of the major literary figures of our time,' yet to date few books on him and his writing have appeared in English. The Achievement of Josef Skvorecky is the first collection of essays in any language to be devoted to his work. Skvorecky was born in 1924, and his life spans most of the major historical events of twentieth-century Europe. An exile who left Prague after the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968, he is among those distinguished writers and artists who produced much of their major work in exile. From this first book, The Cowards (1958), his novels have offered an indispensable fictional account of nearly a century of Czech life and history. Though Skvorecky is essentially a comic and anti-political writer, his novels engage some of the largest and most pressing political, historical, and ideological issues of the century: fascism, communism, the nature of totalitarianism, the fate of religion. Skvorecky is that rare being, a creative writer who is also a teacher, a man of letters, and an intellectual. Sam Solecki has collected and commissioned essays from around the world that provide an overview of Skvorecky's work, place him in a larger cultural and international context, and offer readings of his fiction. Among the contributors are such well-known writers and scholars as Milan Kundera, Jan Kott, George Woodcock, Andre Brink, George Gibian, Igor Hajek, and Stanislaw Baranczak.

Contents:

Reflecting on exile : an interview with Josef Škvorecký (1989-92

Tongue-tied eloquence : notes on language, exile, and writing (1989) / Stanisław Barańczak

Preface to the French edition of Mirákl (The miracle game) (1978) / Milan Kundera

'Where is my home?' Some notes on reading Josef Škvorecký in Amerika (1989) / Sam Solecki

The demolisher of false myths (1980) / Helena Kosková

Life into art : from Josef Škvorecký to Daniel Smiřický (1989) / Gleb Žekulin

Remembering 'The song of the forgotten years' (1989) / Lubomír Dorůžka

The case of the mangy pussycat : an account of the literary scandal surrounding the publication of The cowards (1989) / Michal Schonberg

Last jutterbug in Prague : Konec nylonoveho věku (1989) / Igor Hájek

The girl and the legend : Josef Škvorecký's Émöke' (1980) / Andre Brink

Catholicity as textual function and authorial creed in Miss Silver's past (1989) / Joseph N. Rostinsky

The emigrant as hero : The engineer of human souls (1984) / Jan Kott

The Engineer of human souls in Czech and in English (1991) / Peter Petro

The unforgivable sin of ignorance : notes on The engineer of human souls (1989) / George Woodcock

New world symphonietta : Dvorak in love (1987) / Edward Rothstein

A World symphony in a scherzo : Dvorak in love (1986) / Marketta Goetz-Stankiewicz

Meeting Josef Škvorecký (1989) / Peter Hrubý

The poetics of Prague : literary images of a city (1989) / George Gibian

The girl from Prague : a conversation with Zdena Salivarová (1989-92).

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Nov 2019)

ISBN:

1-4875-7434-7

OCLC:

1129168867